A Civil War Tale
by CutelittleMouseygirl
Summary: During the Civil War, America split into two parts. Everyone always focuses on Alfred, the North, but what about the South? Where did he really come from? What happened after the war? Read to find out. Warning! OC-centric! REALLY OC-centric! Literally from the POV of my OC.
1. Chapter 1

_"I was scared out of my mind and I didn't know why, didn't know what was after me, just knew I'd been told to run 'n' run 'til I couldn't run no more 'n his voice, the Frenchman's voice, was echoin' in my head tellin' me to run 'n not stop but I had to stop 'cuz my breath was harsh in my chest 'til I was breathin' razorblades 'n tastin' their metal in the back of my throat'n then I run to the cabin out in the woods and curl up 'gainst the wall, and let my breathin' tear my chest apart with big, gaspin' breaths and then a dark face appears over me, lookin' real concerned and I start to cry 'cuz I'm caught fer sure now and the dark-skinned woman picks me up and she's rockin' me and sayin, 'there there lil' one, you don't gotta cry, I ain't gon' hurt you...' and carryin' me into the cabin and then my cryin' stops with the rockin' and I fall to sleep..."_

It's been three years since I was found by Sarah behind her and the other girls' cabin, and it's the hottest, driest summer of my whole life. I figure I was about five when I got found, and that would make me almost eight now. I wasn't made to work like the other boys as soon as I got big enough to be useful. Well, I was, but not as hard, 'cuz I may be tanned browner than an Indian, but I'm definitely a whiteboy. That's 'cuz I got straight blondish hair and real pale blue eyes compared with the other boys and their dark colors.

I was always told to stay outta sight of the overseers 'cuz Sarah says it ain't done, slave girls takin' in whiteboys, so I'd be takin' away and sent to the town orphanage far away. She snuck some straw from the big barn and made me a big hat with a wide brim to pull down over my blond hair to hide it, 'cuz not even a mulatto boy'd have blond hair and blue eyes ever.

It all went well 'til one day my hat fell off in front of Judd, one of the meanest overseers on the whole farm, and he took me to Mister and threw me down, sayin, "Looky what I found slinkin' about in the orchird, sir!" And I started cryin' and beggin' to not be send away, since this home's the only one I got

"-and please don't have Sarah beat neither 'cuz she didn't mean nothin' by it and only wanted t' make sure I was safe by takin' me in 'cuz I was just little and all alone and I didn't even know my own name or who my ma and daddy is or where I come from so please, please sir let me staaaaayyy!"

Mister glares down at me until I stop carryin' on and then his look sorta softens and he says "How old are you?"

"I-I think almost eight. I come here when I was four or five, Sarah decided, sir, and I been here for three summers."

"Alright. Until I figure out what to do with you, you may stay, and carry on sleeping outside in the slave quarters. And at least try and make yourself of some use."

"Yessir, Mister." I say, and run outta there.

That was the scariest day on Big Farm, I think, by a long shot.


	2. Chapter 2

I do as Mister said and make myself useful. I'm kinda little still, and I burn in the summer heat, so I ain't a good fieldhand. I ain't a girl so I can't do laundry or help the cook neither. So I usually don't do nothin', and lie in the shade of the cottonpuff trees and listen to the workers singin'. Their songs sound real cheerful, 'til you listen to the words, and then they're all about bein' free someday. Mostly they're kinda hopeful-soundin', which I think is a nice sound. Sometimes I wish I could do somethin' about the free thing, but I dunno what good a uneducated white orphan could do, so I just gotta accept it like everyone else.

Mostly, when I do work, I just fetch water for whoever needs it to be fetched. Sometimes I'm told to climb a roof to put on a new shingle. Once, when our farm first got one, I got told to stick my hand in the cotton machine to un-stick it. There was a loud grindin' noise and I cried out and held my bleedin' hand to me when that happend. Jonah, one of the boys set to work cotton got a charcoal and made a mark on the stone wall right by the thing, sayin' it meant how many people got hurt doin' the machine, and ain't I pleased to be the first one on it?

I almost lost a finger to that thing and we ain't allowed to put our hands in it anymore 'cuz we all know how to work it now and if we die nobody'll be able to replace us for a long while 'cuz they'd have to learn to use it or they'd all just keep dyin' and it ain't ee-co-nomni-ical, if your slaves keep on dyin' before you can get any good amount of cotton run through your big machine. 'Least that's what Mister says.

Mister also says I ain't a slave and gotta stop referrin' to myself as if I was. I don't say nothin' to that, but I know the only reason I do it is 'cuz they're like my family, since I ain't got a ma or daddy.

My favorite work-days are when I help fix up the machines, 'cuz I might only be probably-almost-eight, but I always know how to do all of our new machines from the North, so I teach the others how too. Most times, I look after the little kids, who are too young to work pickin' in the fields yet 'cuz they ain't big enough to carry any amount o' cotton fluff worth anything. They go from babies that can barely walk to probably-five-year-olds.

One boy is my age but he's only got one leg so he can't do much. His mama says he was born that way, but she tells Mister that he got bit by a snake and had to get the leg cut off so he isn't just taken out n' shot like a lame workhorse. Mister don't tolerate those that get born weaker, but he's real understandin' of accidents happenin', 'specially of little kids gettin' snakebit on account of not knowin' to leave 'em alone yet. The one-leg boy helps me look after the little kids and chops firewood, 'cuz he's probably-eight and so not a little kid no more, one leg or not.

Only time I got whipped ever was for standin' in front of the overseer so he wouldn't get to Timmy-with-one-leg, who'd fell and tipped over a bucket of water. The man was furious at me and said whiteboy or not I was gonna git it. It hurt worse than anything in my whole life, and I cried and cried in Sarah's lap, til she stopped pettin' my hair and asked in the quiet way of someone who's kinda shocked at what they're seein' if I was hurtin' anymore. I wasn't, which was strange. Sarah said the welts on my back were closin' right up n' hardly even leavin' scars, right before her very eyes. I soon learned that that's another thing makin' me special, is I heal real fast. Sarah thinks I'm an angel. I dunno 'bout that, but I'll take it.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: I actually have a bunch of chapters pre-saved. I could update more than once a day if you all would like. :3

Mister says in the falltime when it's a sure thing that I'm a probably-eight, I'm being sent off to school in Indy-pen-dance. I asked Sarah if she knows where that's at, and she said she's lived here on Big Farm her whole life so she don't know nothin' 'bout any Indy-pen-dance. Timmy-with-one-leg don't know neither. Askin' around, nobody on the whole of Big Farm seems to know. Well, I bet Missus and Mister know, but I ain't gonna ask them.

So instead I ask Missy, the daughter of the house. She's a little older than me, but that just means she might know more, 'cuz she's left the farm with her daddy on occasion. Besides, I know she can read and write, 'cuz she went to the public school, which puts her above most everyone else I asked on the scale of knowin' stuff, I bet. I bet you know lots 'n lots of stuff when you can read, 'specially if you go to a school.

Walkin' towards the big house, I find Missy sittin' on the porch, watchin' one of the house-ladies do the washing and talkin' 'bout the weather and how hot it is and how glad she is for lemonade and ice tea, 'cuz otherwise she might just burn up. I don't like lemonade 'cuz its sour, but ice tea's real sugary and leafy and cool and one of the best things on all Big Farm, I think. Maybe besides Ol'-Cook-Hattie's pecan pies, it's best. Missy sees me and smiles.

"Hi there, J.G. Come to find the shade?"

Everyone on the farm calls me by my first and middle letters of my name. The first letter stands for my full name Jason, and That's Mister's name too. I was named for him since I'm the only whiteboy on all of the farm. My middle letter don't stand for nothin' 'cept what Sarah thought when she saw me: Gee. I don't got a last name 'cuz Sarah and the others don't got 'em and no one ever thought about it fer me neither. I guess if I wanted to I could take Mister's name, Fredrickson, but I don't much like the sound of it, so just J.G is what I am.

"No ma'am. I just wanted t' ask y' somethin'."

Missy pats the place on the porch next to her and I sit. The wood's smooth and warm with the heat of the day, but the sort of warmth that makes you feel cooler, 'cuz you're also in the shade. I feel bad for the washer-lady, but at least she's got her hands in the cool laundry-water, and Mister told me that slaves don't get as hot or cold as us, and that's why they're made to work in all the weather, 'cuz they don't mind it and whitefolks do and it ain't like they know enough to do anything else. I dunno about that, having heard Sarah complain after a day of workin' in the rain or heat just like anyone before, and havin' watched Jonah figure out why the machines ain't workin' a million times, but as a kid I guess I don't really know nothin' yet.

"I got told I'm bein' sent away for school in the falltime."

Missy nods and tells me that she's also bein' sent away, only I'm going to the charity boarding school run by a generous and rich planter up in Indy-pen-dance and Missy's going to a fancy girl school in the North, which is where all the good schools are. I ask her if her school's in the North, where's Indy-pen-dance? She smiles at me in her pleasant way.

"It's in Missouri, I do believe. One of the states that borders the Northern line. You ought to be right at home there, bein' close as you are to the blacks here."

She's smilin' still as she says it as she knows better n' anyone that I don't got a ma or daddy like she does so Sarah and the others are my family for me. The Northern border, as well as I can figure, is the area above which you ain't allowed to have slaves. Bein' a dirt-poor orphan and so not a slaveholder it shouldn't matter much to me what side I'm on on the line, but I do like bein' on the South side better, even with havin' never been to the North. I hear it gets cold there in the winter. Colder than it gets here, even. It might just even snow in Missouri at my school.

I ain't never touched snow before. Missy says it snows here sometimes, but not ever in my lifetime, it ain't. I'm excited.


	4. Chapter 4

When I do go to school two days from now, I won't be allowed to wear my outfit no more. Makes me look too much like a real pale Negro, Missy says. 'Cept she, like her daddy, uses the real mean word for 'em sometimes. 'Least Sarah says it's mean, after she caught me sayin' it to someone else. I'm of my opinion that just 'cuz whites are supposed to take care of 'em and make 'em work for us, don't mean we gotta be mean and call 'em names.

My outfit as it stands now is a gauzy thin white shirt and blue pants that was too long when I first got 'em but now go to my knees. It's the only thing I got to my own name, and even if I can't wear it, I'm gonna pack it in my bag. That's the other thing I got. An old saddlebag to put my stuff in. And my knife that Mister gave to me on Christmas last year. I guess whiteboys get things like knives on Christmas and coloredboys only get to not have to work. That ain't too fair, but I ain't gonna say nothin', 'cuz my complainin' won't ever do nothin' but get ever'one down, Sarah says. The knife's long as my arm from my wrist to my elbow and real jagged on one end. Missy says it's a huntin' knife and the jagged edge is to carve things with.

Today I'm going with Mister to get fitted into a fine uniform.

I've never been off of Big Farm and I ask if Sarah might come with us, since she hasn't neither. Mister looks at her, then at me, and I give my best "lil' boy who's about to leave his only home forever makes one request, sir" look. He says if Sarah can find someone to take her workload she may come. We already asked Anna, one of the housegirls and Missy's nursemaid, and she said alright 'cuz she likes goin' outside and don't got much to do since Missy ain't much of a little girl no more anyway. So with Sarah sittin' quietly in the back of the wagon and me in the seat by Mister, we go to the town of Allan.

As the wagon rattles 'long past other big farms in the area, I can hear the slaves in the fields singin':

_"Swing low, sweet chariot _

_Comin' for to carry me hoooome_

_Swing low, sweet chariot_

_Comin' for to carry me hoome"_

Mister looks at me and tells me to cut it out when I go to join in 'cuz whiteboys don't sing slave songs and that's the way of it. I ask him what I'm to sing, if not what I been taught, and he ain't got nothin' to say to that, so I look back at Sarah and make a face by scrunchin' my nose and crossin' my eyes and she smiles and then puts her hands over her mouth to keep from gigglin' as I make a real stern face with my eyes still crossed and pretend to wave a switch at her. Mister tells me to stop foolin' around and face forward or he'll show me just what his crop on my backside feels like and Sarah too, by God. I stop and sit straight up and look serious while Sarah keeps her hands over her mouth to keep from laughin'.

Mister rolls his eyes and after a bit asks me if I know how to drive a wagon. I don't, 'cuz I never was big enough to during haymaking times. Mister shows me how you click your tongue at the horses to make 'em go and how you pull back the reins to make 'em stop, and pull 'em one way or another to make 'em turn. He lets me drive for a bit, which in spite of us only headin' down a straight road, I find to be a lotta fun. I tell him how much I like doin' this and ask if I'll get to drive wagons at school. Mister smiles and tells me,

"You just might, boy. One thing I know for sure is you'll get to learn horse ridin' and numbers and such."

School don't sound half bad right now and I turn around to look at Sarah and I tell her I'll teach her horse ridin' when I come back to Big Farm after my schoolin', which I'm fully gonna do, and I'll teach everyone numbers, too, and I'll read books and newspapers and crop-price papers to 'em, since slaves ain't allowed to learn readin' but they sure like knowin' stuff and there ain't nothin' bad about readin' to those that can't, and then Mister tells me 'J.G, turn around for Pete's sake' and we're gettin' into the town so I sit up straight and try to look less like a farmerboy and more like a townboy.

The lady in the clothes shop is kinda snippy to her poor slave girl who is runnin' back and forth tryin' to keep up with the flood of requests. It ain't my place to say nothin' and it ain't Sarah's neither but we give the poor thing pitying looks as her mistress puts measuring tapes on me and puts needles in the blue coat that's way too big but gettin' better. I ask the shop-lady what her girl's name is and she says she don't know and don't much care, it's just "you there" or "girl" to her. It still ain't my place to say nothin' but Mister knows all of his slaves' names and he got two-hundred-fifty plus one whiteboy raised with 'em, so I am of my opinion that this lady ain't a very likable person, if she ain't even bothered to know her one girl's name.

Mister surveys me in my finished uniform of a blue coat with red ribbon tie and blue pants goin' down to just above my knees and Sarah says if Mister don't mind her sayin', sir, I look pretty fine in my new outfit. Mister nods and agrees that yes, I do look a whole lot more civilized in it. Then Mister sees my bare tanned feet and I'm told we are going to the shoes shop because I sure can't go to school in Indy-pen-dance with no shoes or stockings. I wonder why we can't get shoes in the clothes shop, but I follow Mister anyway. I ain't never had shoes before, and while Sarah's got her feet bound in leather since she got blisters and don't want 'em to get infected, those sure ain't no shoes. We're both excited to see the shoe shop.

I come out of the shoes shop with shiny black shoes and white stockings that stop right below my knees, leaving 'em stickin' out between my pants and stockings. While I was gettin' my feet measured over and over again, Mister asked of Sarah why she had leather on her feet and when she said, "'S blisters, Mas'r." he asked the shoemaker if he had any worn cheap shoes to put on her feet so as to get his leather strips back. So Sarah's got shoes now too, and I know when she ain't in the field, maybe when she's tendin' for a baby or the chickens, or too old to do nothin' but watch those that are too little to do nothin', some of the other girls'll wear her shoes and wear 'em 'til they're worn out for good.

We come back through the gates with Sarah in the back of the wagon and me in the seat by Mister. Everyone who ain't workin, and some that had stopped to watch the wagon, all wave at me and Sarah and cheer for me. I wish that night, in a big pile of the other boys n' me, that the next days don't ever come. But they do, and soon I'm bein' dressed by candlelight to get put on an early coach to Indy-pen-dance. Everyone stops and waves me off as the wagon goes through the gate with me in it for the last time in my whole life. I know boys ain't s'posed to cry, but there's a lump in my throat that's makin' my eyes tear up and if that's cryin' then I'm cryin' as all of those that was my family cheer and call out goo'bye, goo'luck J.G to me.

I don't wanna leave the only home I ever got...


	5. Chapter 5

Today is my first day at Herbert Johnson's Charity Academy For Boys. The school looks like a rich planter's mansion, with dark windows and a big wood door. It scares me, but I been through worse with bein' whipped and all, so I'll manage. A slave girl who's only a little bigger than me is waitin' for me at the door. She's got her dark hair back in two braids that end in fuzzy black puffs on the shoulders of her lavender-colored dress. She does the dippy thing all the housegirls know to do, and leads me in. I ask her name, and she looks down at her worn shoes with her big dark eyes, clasps her hands in front of her on her white apron and says Mary. I tell her I'm J.G and ask her if the school's Mister is a nice one. She tells me that it ain't her place to say and I leave it at that. That means he ain't a nice Mister, so he probably ain't too nice to the boys neither.

Soon a man appears, followed by Mary who'd left to go get him. The man is tall and has gray hair combed back and greased down so it he looks like a real-live statue, carved from stone. He's wearin' a good black suit and has a sharp face and hooked nose that make him look a lot like a turkey-vulture waitin' for some poor boy to drop dead of fear so as he can eat.

"And I suppose you are our new student?" His voice is stuffy and high-brow, even more so than Big Farm Mister was.

I look down at my feet and say "Yessir. Pleasure to meet you, sir."

"Hmmph. Don't look at your feet as if you are guilty of some crime, boy." I look up in a hurry.

"Better. Your name, as I have it entered, is Jason G. Jones. Is that right?"

"Yessir." I dunno what else I could say. I dunno where Mister got that last name neither, but I like the way it sorta twangs in your mouth. You say that name, and everyone can tell right away if you're a Southerner or not 'cuz the Southerners make it sound twangy and I hear Northerners sound real sharp and stuffy when they talk. They don't twang and drawl like we Farmerboys in the South do, and from what Missy says, they don't sing as they work like we do neither. That must be why they're so tech-no-lolo-gy minded and boring.

"What does the 'G' stand for?" Speakin' of sharp, Mister's voice seemed like it could cut a poor farm boy in half if it wanted to.

"Nothin' sir, just 'G' is what it is, sir." I swear my voice ain't shakin' one bit, no sir.

"Very well. You come from… The Fredrickson Plantation, in Allan, South Carolina, correct?" I dunno what he's tryin' to gain by makin' me confirm all this but okay.

"Yessir."

"And when was your last birthday, Jason?"

"I-I dunno sir… I came to Bi- the plantation when I was just small so I dunno." Then all at once, the date surfaces out of information I thought I'd forgotten long ago.

"A-actually sir, I do remember, now that I think… It's December the 20th."

"And since you are eight years of age that would make your date of birth December 20, 1849, correct?"

"I suppose so, sir. I ain't too good at math."

He gave me a very harsh look. "You AREN'T VERY good at math, you mean?"

"Yessir, sorry sir. I aren't very good at it, sir." Guess I did grow up talkin' wrong after all. I wanna go back to Big Farm so bad. Sarah and Timmy and Missy wouldn't get mad 'cuz I said I ain't too good at things 'stead of I aren't very good...

"Jason, the correct phrase would be 'I am not very good at math' not 'I ain't too good' or 'I aren't very good.' Consider this your first lesson in proper grammar and enunciation."

"Yessir. Thank y', sir." I don't got any idea what grammar and an-ounce-ee-ay-shun are, but I'll try my best and learn 'em good.

"I'll have Mary take you to the dorms and instruct you in the schedule here. The other boys are upstairs doing their schoolwork. You will not begin class until tomorrow as today is Sunday."

"Yessir. Thank you again for takin' me in, sir." He huffs a little bit, I think 'cuz I ain't s'posed to say 'yessir' or somethin' but he don't say nothin' about it, and the slave girl watches him go and then gently puts her hand over my arm. She ain't allowed to touch me I guess. I tell her, "It's okay if you gotta put yer hand on me to get my attention. I don't mind it a bit if it's just that."

She smiles a little sadly at me. "Thank you for saying so, young sir, but I'm not allowed no matter what or Master will have me beaten."

Seems this grammar stuff is important in the servants of the school too. 'Least Mary don't talk like Sarah or any of even the Big Farm housegirls did. Guess I better learn to talk right fast. I follow Mary upstairs to a big room with tables in it and about thirty boys goin' from my size to grown up sized doin' things like writin' on papers and readin' in books. They all wear the exact same outfit as me and they all turn to the door as it opens. Mary dips and says,

"Sorry to interrupt your studies, sirs, but I was told to bring the new boy here." She dips again and leaves. I'm real nervous as all the boys survey me. One asks me,

"So what's your name, then?"

"I'm Jason, but y'all can call me J.G, and I'm from Fredrickson Plantation in South Carolina." I'm nervous and don't wanna mess up. One of the boys a little older than me with real orange hair and dark green eyes comes over and smiles in a friendly way.

"Fredrickson? My father did business with them, buying cotton for the textile mills in New York." He don't sound like me or Mister or anyone else so I know he ain't from here. I'm pretty sus-pit-chi-ous of him.

"I know I sound like some backwoods mudcrawler to most of these boys, but you talk pretty darn funny too. Where're you born from?" He backs up a bit. My sus-pit-shun look must'a scared him. Good. I ain't gonna let some big funny-soundin' boy push me around, by God.

"I grew up in New York City. We moved to Louisiana to take over my grandfather's sugar plantation in Baton Rouge. I was sent to the public school here instead of travelling all the way back to Boston for my old school." He looks a little sad now. Probably homesick like I am. Bet he misses his ma and daddy. Bet he wants to go home to be away from us loud Southerners.

"Puttin' it so you as a dumb hillbilly understand him, he's a Yankee and an outsider n' you best avoid him always!" calls out a lean, mean-lookin' boy with brown hair all messy n' curly on his head. "Course, you two might get along, the Yankee and the hillbilly!" The other boys all sorta smile and a couple snicker.

I get mad and start towards him 'cuz the only way to teach a badmouther a lesson is to go n' punch 'em right in that same bad mouth but the yankee boy holds me back by grabbin' the back of my coat. "No, don't do that! You'll be whipped for fighting, I've seen it happen!" I stop. I sure don't wanna get whipped my first day. I glare at the brown-haired boy one last time and jerk the back of my coat out of the orange-haired yankee's grip. Actin' like nothin' that mean boy said bothered me, I look around the rest of the room.

"So where d' we sleep?" Orange-hair answers for me:

"We sleep in the dormitory of course. I'll show you to it as Mary should have."

"Gosh, she's likely gonna be whipped, for not showin' me around like she was told..." I feel kinda bad for her thinkin' of how shy 'n gentle she seems. And I know as well as anyone that slave or not, nobody likes bein' whipped and everyone forgets things sometimes. Orange-hair nods.

"It is a shame. I wish we lived back up above the line, where a girl like Mary could go to one of the colored schools in Canada instead of serving a white boys' school."

"You're allowed to teach Negroes in the North?" I ask. Orange-hair looks at me strangely.

"Well, yes. Isn't education for them here at the discretion of their owner?" I shake my head really hard so he don't ever even try such a thing.

"No sir-ee! It's real real illegal to teach 'em to read or write, 'cuz it might cause an uprising, they say!" Orange-hair sighs as we go through a door at the end of the hallway.

"That's a pity. I bet there's some very smart blacks out there who will never learn to read and write because the Southerners are afraid of an uprising." He blushes as he remembers where he is and who he's talking to. "Er, I mean..." I wave it off.

"I hear you. If it were up to me, I'd teach nursemaids how to read at least so's they could teach the young'uns they bring up. 'Course the lawmen ain't gonna listen to the ideas o' one farmboy and his yankee friend." I sound real uneducated next to Orange-hair and his clippy fast, yankee way of talking. I notice that we both are looking kinda hard into a mirror set up on a wall in the empty dorm room.

I ain't never seen a clear image of what I look like before on account of having never been inside Big House for longer than a few moments and none of the cabins havin' a mirror. I'm kinda skinny, but not in a hungry sorta way, but lean, like someone who's worked his whole life. I'm tanned, in the parts where I can see my skin, which is my hands and face, real dark, which I could tell from lookin' at my hands back at Big Farm. I do got real light, pale blue eyes and my hair is straight and a sorta wheat-field yellow color, all golden-y and nice. There's that one part of hair that goes down my nose that I can't make stay anywhere else, and I got freckles specklin' my cheeks, and I bet lotsa other places I can't see too.

Orange-hair boy is tall and kinda plump but sleek, like he's been fed good his whole life but also had to work to get it. His hair is combed down, but I bet it'd look better all messy. He don't got freckles, which is weird for a boy with orange hair, but I guess up in yankee-land there ain't enough sun for freckles.

Sarah always said white farmerboys got freckles 'cuz God needed to at least try and darken us enough to keep us from sunburn and since sunburn on the face hurts the worst, He tries to protect us there first and most, makin' spots. For some reason, I can't stop lookin' at orange-hair's eyes. They're a real piercing dark green, like a forest at night. A real contrast to my eyes. I bet I got pale blue 'cuz I was born in wintertime when the sky is a pale light blue.

"We look a considerable amount different than each other, huh?"

"...Yeah." I don't got any idea what con-sit-er-able means, so I agree. It dawns on me that I don't know orange-hair's name. "Hey, you know my name, but what's yours? And who's that mean ol' boy with the curly hair who called me a dumb hillbilly?"

"The boy who made fun of you is named Jebidiah. The other boys call him 'Jeb.' His father is the preacher at the church we attend."

"Gosh, he sure don't sound like his daddy's holiness rubbed off any on him." Orange-hair smiles and almost laughs a bit at that. He sits on the edge of what I'm sure is his bed. I sit across from him on another bed in that row.

"I suppose so. My name is Rowan. Rowan McGuire. My parents moved from Ireland when I was a baby, so I grew up here in America."

Aw shoot, I was startin' to like him, and it turns out he's a 'tater-ni-... never you mind. I gotta sound civilized and I bet callin' even immigrant kids names ain't good. Besides, he seems plenty nice, even for a immigrant kid. I can't think of nothin' to say that ain't mean, so I just say, "Your ma and daddy are foreigners?"

"Yes. I'm aware of what you Southerners think of the Irish as a whole, which is only a little higher than what you think of your slaves, but I am American, because I was born here." He gives me a look that's darin' me to say anything. I don't. Instead I ask him which beds are empty for me to take.

"The one you're sitting on is empty. Nobody wants to sleep next to a carrot-top future drunk, right?" I put my bag on the bed and sorta smile at Rowan.

"I don't mind it a bit! It ain't like any o' your problems are gonna rub off on me, so why shouldn't I sleep here if I wanna?" I hope I sounded acceptin' enough. I wasn't raised up to be nice to immigrant boys near the North Compromise Border. "Now, Row, why don't you start teachin' me how to talk right so Mister don't have a conniption fit whenever he talks to me."


	6. Chapter 6

Today's my second day at school and my first day of classes, and Row says he'll show me around. First off, we wake up at dawn in our soft feather beds with warm thick blankets and fluffy pillows. I, a poor farmerboy used to sleepin' in a heap o' coloredboys in a drafty cabin with three or so raggy, thin blankets thrown on us, find this to be pure luxury despite Row sayin' he thinks they ought'a replace the pillows and the blankets are a little scratchy.

When we get up, we all get dressed and the older boys shave and all of us go to the privy if we've gotta, and then we comb our hair. Mine's pretty gritty as I try to comb through it and Mary quietly suggests I have a bath after classes to get the dust out. Jeb implies to the other boys that I might have bugs from hangin' around all them Negroes and I wanna say that they're all actually pretty clean, but Big Farm did always have a fleas problem with the kids especially. It's why even the girls all had short hair, 'cuz fleas don't like it. And I got graybacks before, too. They made my head itch like crazy, stupid bugs. One o' the best things about bein' a coloredboy would be never gettin' hair-bugs. As far as Jeb and his comments, I just say nothin' and go back to workin' the knots outta my hair.

When we finish makin' ourselves presentable, we all go to breakfast, which is eggs and ham and sausage and fried potatos and toasted bread 'n butter and for the older boys coffee. For us younger boys we get orange juice to drink which I ain't never heard of before and find I like a lot. It's kinda sour, but not as sour as lemonade, which is nice. I ask Row if we might get ice tea here, and he says usually it's offered with our mid-day meal and our supper, and while he don't like it, there ain't nothin' stoppin' me from enjoyin' it.

My first class of the day is readin' and penmanship. Row says that's the fancy word for writin'. The teacher's a young lady with sandy brown hair tied in a bun and honey-colored eyes. She's real nice, and pulls me aside to find out what reader to give me instead of makin' me show how dumb I am in front of all the others.

"Jason, is it?" she asks me. She's got a yankee accent. Must be a missonary or somethin', come to teach boys whose daddies can't send 'em to the good schools in New York and Boston. Maybe Indian boys too. I seen a couple of 'em that sit in the back of the class and keep to themselves. They stand out 'cuz they're darker skinned than most of us and they got raven-black hair and black eyes to match it. I sorta feel for 'em, bein' taken from a place without your permission and then bein' told ever'thing you thought you knowed was wrong. I'm gonna make an effort to be kind to them 'cuz we're both different than the others here and so might get along.

"Actually, ma'am, I go by J.G." I tell the teacher. She smiles in a sort of worried way at me.

"Well, how about I call you J.G, but you sign your papers Jason Jones, okay?"

"What about the G?" I know there's probably a million boys called Jason Jones out there, so I gotta stand out with my G.

"Jason G. Jones, then?" She says, sorta relaxin'. I think she thought I'd put up more of a fight on her teachin' me to write my full name. I bet the Indian kids did and that's how she's approachin' me too.

"Yes, ma'am." I say.

"J.G, can you recite your alphabet to me?" She asks. I don't know nothin' 'bout no alphabet, so I only say,

"No, ma'am, I can't."

"Why not, J.G?"

"'Cuz I ain't never learned, ma'am." She puts her hand on my shoulder and sighs.

"J.G, you mustn't say 'ain't.' It isn't proper English. Instead say 'have not' or 'are not.'"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You haven't learned the alphabet, therefore you cannot write your name, correct?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Here," she hands me a heavy blue book, "This is the reader for our eight-year-olds. We have two levels below it and five above. Can you read the first sentence to me?" I flip open the book to the first page with words on it. I don't know where to even start, so I look back up at Teacher and tell her,

"I can't read it, ma'am."

"Very well," she takes the book from me and hands me a slimmer, red book, "Try the first primer."

"I don't know what sounds the letters make, ma'am. I ain't- er, have not ever been to any school before in my life." I look at the book and the gold lettering on the front and feel my face gettin' hot. I know I'm gonna be readin' in the little kids' book, and that the others are gonna tease me for it. I must be tearin' up 'cuz Teacher looks real sympathetic at me.

"Oh dear... J.G, you musn't cry. Why don't I pick one of the older boys to take you, Christian and Joseph to the back room and tutor all of you? Would that make you feel better, having others with you?"

"Y-yes, ma'am..." I manage out. I point to Row. "H-he's been real nice to me... can he teach me?" She smiles and nods, then looks back at the class.

"Rowan, Christian, Joseph, come here." The two Indian boys and Row come to where we are. Teacher turns to Row. "J.G hasn't been to school before and neither have Christian or Joseph. Can you take them into the back room and teach them their alphabet and how to write their names?"

"Yes, ma'am." Row says, then turns to us three. "Follow me." We do.

In the back room we sit in front of the board. I look at the Indian boys and smile real friendly to them.

"Hello, I'm J.G. I'm from South Carolina. Where're you from?" They look kinda blankly at me. "Do you even know English?" I ask.

"Little bit." one says.

"Is it hard? To learn?" I ask. I been talkin' English my whole life and never thought anything of it.

"Yah. But must learn." he says. I nod. 'Course they gotta learn if they're gonna live around here. The only place I hear they talk Indian is in the frontiers. Row gets a chalk pencil and starts writin' the letters for us on the board. Soon he points to the first one and says,

"This is the letter A. It says 'ahhh.' Can you three repeat it back? A goes 'ahhh'."

"Ay goes ahhh" I say.

"Hay go ahhhh." the younger Indian boy goes.

"Ay go ahhh" the other says.

After we finish that, Row has us open our primers and shows us how now that we know the letters and the sounds they make, we can sound out words.

"Ssseee t-t... t-huh-eh..."

"That word is the word 'the.' It's kind of hard to sound out. You should memorize it." Row tells me.

"See... the... buh- ball." I look up at him, smilin'. "See the ball. That's what it says, ain't it?"

"Yes." He says, lookin' kinda proud of me. I'm real proud of myself. I bet if Sarah was here she'd be real proud of me too. "Lookit my lil' J.G.," she'd say, grinnin' like an idiot, "Lookit my lil' J.G. who kin read already!"

Then, a bell goes and Row says we are to go to music, and then to horse managment and ridin' from which a dinner-bell will call us to dinner and then after we eat we have three more classes, supper, study time, and bed. I can sing real well for my age, Sarah always said. 'Course mamas and them actin' like 'em gotta say that stuff, I guess.

The music teacher is an old man, but he seems pleasent in a strict sorta way. Like he'll be nice if you don't do nothin' bad.

"Ah, yes, our new student, Jason."

"J.G, sir." I say as politly as I can manage.

"Our new student J.G, then." He says with a small smile on his face. "Well, J.G, can you sing us something so I may put you in the chorus?" I nod and think of somethin' that got a lotta high and low notes in it and come up with my favorite of the workin' songs:

"Oh, Miss Wright,

Why don't you ring that bell?

Oh, Miss Wright,

Why don't you ring that bell?

I can tell

The way those greens smell."

"Alright, J.G. Strange of you to pick such a song, but very good. Go stand up between Rowan and Jebidiah."

I do and then I'm handed a folder with words on it. Jeb looks as if he's gonna say somethin' about the fact I was singin' a slave's work song, but he don't say nothin'. I can't read the words on my page quite yet, but Row, seein' how confused I am, nudges me and says,

"Don't worry, just mouth along until you get it. You'll learn to read them soon enough."

Then we all start and soon enough we sound real good, with the boys whose voices are changed mixin' with us little boys.

Then we all take turns soloin' and then the bell goes and we're all goin' up to our dorms to change into clothes we can get dirty in. I put on my Big Farm outfit and ask Row if It's okay to go barefoot in the horsebarn. He says he ain't never tried, and anyway why don't I got boots?

"I grew up poor. I ain't even had shoes 'til a week ago."

"Well here, have my old pair. I've outgrown them and was looking to bring them to the orphanage, but you could probably use them more." I put on the worn leather boots and they're a little big, but they'll do. I stuff my pants into them and look at Row's outfit. He's wearin' a white shirt with puffy long sleeves and a dusty black vest over it. His pants are brown and stuffed into his darker brown boots. He's got a patch over a hole in one of the knees of his pants.

"Goodness, J.G. You look like one of the servant boys like that. Where did you get such an outfit?" Row says, lookin' me over.

"...South Carolina?" I say.

"Well at any rate, let us go." And with that, we go to the horsebarn.

Each of us boys is allowed to practice our ridin' pretty free of supervision in our own areas until the dinnerbell rings. I 'spose Row thinks I must know what I'm doin' 'cuz I'm a farmboy, 'cuz he don't offer nothin' in way of advice. After all, livin' on a plantation fer three years, I ought'a know how to get on a horse and ride him, right?

I'm assigned a big, light brown mare named Juniper. I need to stand on the edge of the fence to get onto her back, but once I'm up there, I grab the reins, click my tongue like Mister showed me and she starts off at a fast walk. I'm feelin' real confident of my abilities and so I slap the reins a little and say, "hyah!" and she speeds up. This starts joltin' me around and soon I fall off into the dust.

"Ow..." I say. Juniper snorts in a patient way, standin' a ways off where she stopped after I fell. She snorts again as I pat her nose and tell her, "Good girl," and lead her back to the fence so's I can get back up and try again. I fall off five more times, and each time I go longer between 'em. By the time I hear the bell ringin', I can stay on and just put my heels in Juniper's sides a bit and she starts lopin' to the barn like she knows what the bell means.

Dinner is cornbread and honey with chicken and gravy and mashed 'taters, which are some of my favorite foods. We get ice tea, too! Then we go to speakin' class, taught by Mister, and then 'rithmatic and history and current events. Then we have supper, which is spicy shrimps (which I ain't tried before and like a lot!), chicken gumbo (which Row says the cook on his grandpa's plantation makes better'n here) and more ice tea.

The next few days durin' studytime, I practice writin' by makin' a letter to Missy, with Row helpin' me spell outta my grammar book. It takes me three whole days of the two-hour studytime to do it, but I write a letter for the first time!

_deer missy,_

_lookee heer at yer lil jg writin to you alredee. skool is fun and we get all the ice tee we want. onlee bad thing is this boy calld jeb. hes reel meen an i no it aint ryt but i hoap he gits wats cumin to him soon. still i bet yer skool is reel fun to. do yew get to ryde horses there like we do. i met a reel nice boy calld row and hes helpin me with my writin and reedin. if yew go bak to big farm befor i do pleez let sarah no that im havin fun but i still miss her an the others sumthin teribl. i aint got nothin else to wryt abowt now so row says this is how yew end a lettr._

_yers_

_Jason G. Jones_

_ps sho sarah my name cuz i no shell be reel prowd of the fact i kin wryt my own naym._


	7. Chapter 7

I turned twelve this year. That means, that if I was born in 1849, it's 1861 now. Row, who can read better than me, says there's a war that's lookin' to move even here to Missouri. He says the South part of the country went away from the other part and is fighting as something called the Confederate States. I wanna join in on that fight. I dunno why but I do. I've seen the soldiers go by with their thick gray wool coats and always one of the company carrying their flag which is red with a blue "x" from one corner to the other with white stars in it. Mister says we're all too young to go to war, my eager rebels, so we ought'a shut up and go back to our studies. Even once the rebels win we can't run a country with a bunch 'o stupid farmboys so sit back and read and become good pol-lit-ishuns.

I can't focus on that, though. I got a big problem. It's been almost four years and I still can't stop lookin' at Row's eyes. I love how they're dark green, and I like how it goes with his hair. He's started messin' it up as of late and it looks a lot better than the combed-down richboy look he had before.

He helps me 'cuz I can't read and write like the other boys can. I sit in the dorm and read out loud to him, soundin' out words I don't know. I like the way Row smiles and laughs when I mess my readin' up in a funny way, so sometimes I do it on purpose. I don't know what the feelin' I get in my chest when it's just us in the dorm room is, but it sure is nice.

One day, I'm really strugglin' with my primer, which is the readin' book for the little kids that I'm gettin', I swear. Row stops me and looks at me kinda funny. He asks me what's botherin' me. I tell him I feel weird when we're alone like this and I dunno why and I dunno how to make it stop 'cuz I got a feelin' I shouldn't feel like that so I dunno what to do.

He sorta gently takes my reader from my hands and sets it aside. He tells me he feels that way too, and he knows exactly what it is 'cuz he asked his big sister last time he got to go home for a holidays. Row says what we got is called the kinda likin' that all teenagers get for each other sometimes. I ask him what we're gonna do.

He smiles, says "You always were a bit of a slow one, J.G." and kisses me.


	8. Chapter 8

I wanna be a good Christian boy, I really do, but church is so _boring_.

All we do is sit and listen to Jeb's daddy talk about sin to us for two hours. Row told me to quit lookin' at the girls that come from their school to go to the church too, as ain't he good enough fer me? I like Row fine, but some of them girls are real pretty. We ain't allowed to talk to 'em, though. We just all file into our own sides of the big, open church, sit, listen and don't move, don't look anywhere but to yer front, don't do nothin'.

We had church back at Big Farm, I remember, but that was different. We did songs and stuff there. Here in Independance there ain't no singin' in church I guess. Also, when we get back to school, we don't got classes on Sundays, but we ain't allowed to do our work or nothin'. Sunday's a rest day, Mister says, and good boys don't work on rest days. I tell Row that we were 'spected to work on Big Farm no matter what.

'Cept I guess we got to stop early on Sundays. One day every few, anyway. I never really knew what day or year it was 'til I got to school.

One day, though, Jeb's daddy the Preacher explains how terrible and awful some paths boys can go down are. He says if any of us youngers are tempted to do anything terrible, it's the Devil tryin' to get inside of us, and he possessed us when we give in to it. I can feel Row get real tense next to me when he says that.

After church I ask Row why he got so scared.

"I suppose it just sort of got to me. You Southerners are very... intense with your religion, aren't you?"

"Y'mean it ain't like that everywhere?" I ask him right back. I talk better now, but I only talk my best when I'm around teachers and Mister. Most of the boys don't care if I sound like I just crawled outta the haywagon.

"There are places in the North where the factories run all week. Families may have religion, of course, but they have to work and thus cannot always go to church." Row looks at my expression and smiles.

"My parents are Catholic, of course, but we always have our worship times. Partially because we're rather rich."

I really don't know nothin' of the yankee way of life. Come to think of it, I don't really know a lot about Row. Since we're gonna have relations, I probably should learn.

"Hey, Row... you said yer family came here when you was little? But yer workin' yer granddaddy's plantation in Louisiana?"

"Yes, that's true. My grandfather left when my father's eldest brother was old enough to care for the younger ones. He was going to make his children a life in America, and ended up on a plantation. When I was a baby, he died, leaving the factories he'd made to his youngest son, my father, and the plantation to the eldest. My father then took my mother, five-year-old sister, three-year-old brother and one-year-old me to New York to take over the factories, and my uncle abandoned the plantation a few years ago, when I was about eight, and so we moved South and now I am here." He looked over at me, "Now, J.G., what about you?"

"I ain't got much of a story..." I start, but Row presses on, askin' me what livin' on a plantation my whole life is like.

"Well.. I ain't been there my whole life, and you know that, Row. As fer what it's like... It's hot in the summer, and colder in the winter. I ain't never seen snow before, but I heard of it..." I didn't know how to describe to Row the smell of the grass toastin' in the summer heat, the feel of the breeze when yer sittin' under a cottonpuff tree to 'scape the heat... I don't think I ever could describe that right to someone.

"It sounds lovely. You must have been sad to leave." I hang my head and sorta nod. Row sees how upset I am, and puts his hand on my shoulder. "Well, at any rate... after we would you care to walk out to the haybarn with me?"

The haybarn is where we go when we got freetime and don't wanna risk Mary findin' us again. When we get to the top of the hill right over the big barn, I yell out, "Race ya down there!" and take off, Row laughing behind me.

We get there at about the same time 'cuz I'm faster but Row's still taller, 'cuz I ain't quit growin' quite yet. We slip into the door that's always been open a crack, and go deep into the hay, to make a little hollow in the warm crackly stuff.

I sit on Row's lap in the hollow and he kisses me first and it feels nice, his mouth on mine. We do that 'til we're both pantin' from lack of air and I'm feelin' hot so I start unbuttoning my blue jacket and he starts helpin' me and then my shirt and jacket are both off and Row's kissin' all over my chest and neck and it feels good when his mouth finds mine again and I help him with his jacket and shirt and then his hands are movin' to my belt and then the dinnerbell rings in the distance, and we gotta come apart again, pantin' still.

We ain't never gotten far enough to where we're both not wearin' nothin', and we both know we really wanna, and if it's like Preacher says, and the Devil tryin' to possess us, then maybe, just maybe possesion ain't so bad


	9. Chapter 9

I've taken to sneakin' into Row's bed at night because we can't always be slippin' out to the haybarn and we still like to be close together, even when we ain't kissin' and touchin'. Recently Mister caught Sammy Lawson, who's one of the older boys, with one of the older girls from the girls' school nearby in his bed. Boys here at school ain't allowed to have relations with anyone, and any boy who's caught with a girl in his bed is likely to be beaten. I can only assume the same's true fer a boy caught with another boy in his bed. So I always make sure I'm outta Row's bed before the rest of the boys are awake.

So the months go on. But one day, Row's on top o' me and we're both not wearin' our nightshirts 'cuz it gets real hot under his covers and we ain't been out to the barn in ages 'cuz it's wintertime and I'm likin' the feelin' of his mouth on mine and then the covers is pulled back and I hear Jeb go, "See, Mister, I told yew they were up t' no good!" and there's Mister lookin' the maddest I ever seen him and I get real scared as he grabs Row by one arm and me by one and silently takes us both to his office.

Mister's office is this dusty, borin' place full of bookshelves and with a big desk in the middle. He sits at the desk and glares daggers at the both of us. Row's got his head held high, and I'm lookin' down at my poor bare feet as we stand there in just our white underdrawers. I promise I ain't cryin' from the fear but sniffles escape from me and tears drop onto the dark red carpeting anyway.

"You boys are in some serious trouble." Mister is good at the understatin'. "Do you have any idea what sin you were committing?"

"No, sir..." I mumble. Row don't say a word. I guess he got told it was okay to do what he was doin' even though he knew it was bad.

"You were commiting the sin of homosexuality. In the term of a devil-possessed boy like you, Jason, you were performing sexual acts with another male."

I wonder if devil-possessed boys are allowed to cry when they're 'shamed o' what they done. I sure hope so 'cuz that's what I'm doin'...

"I didn't know it was wrong, sir! I got told by Row that his sister said it was just somethin' all teenagers do at this time!" Row chimes in,

"Sir, please, J.G didn't know any better, honest! Let him go, please!"

Mister grabs my arm and drags me out the door. "Perhaps we can still save the younger of you, then. Follow me, Rowan." He says, and even though he's draggin' me so it ain't like I got a choice in the matter, "Come along, Jason."

We're goin' towards the whippin' post out back and dear God I don't wanna be whipped again so I start screamin' like I'm bein' murdered and beggin' for Mister to not whip me, and some of the slaves headin' to their quarters out by here stop and look at me with sort of a pityin' look but they can't do nothin' and as my hands are tied to the post I can hear Row beggin' Mister to not do it, please sir, he didn't do nothin' wrong, sir!

But it don't help nothin' and I hear the crack of the big whip goin' through the air and then feel the terrible stingin' burn on my back and 'cuz I'm so small wrap 'round to my belly too and I start cryin' harder as it hits me again 'n again 'n then it stops and through my misery I can hear Mister tell Row,

"Since you're the initiator, and the one pleading to spare the one you've corrupted, you may give him the rest of the lashes. Do it until I tell you to stop. Now, Rowan."

I hear Row whimper out how sorry he is to me as the terrible, awful pain starts again as my back gets torn open by the leather and then I hear Row cry out and Mister shout at him to stop talkin' to me, and then I pass out from it, it hurts so bad...


	10. Chapter 10

I open my eyes to Mary's face hovering over me. I gasp and try to squirm away 'cuz she scared me, bein' so close, but pain in my back stops me right in my tracks. Mary puts her hand on my shoulder, even though I know she's been told to not.

"Now now, Master Jones, you need to stay down so's those cuts'll heal up without scarrin' you too bad, alright?"

I nod, and she disappears. One of the boys younger than me, named Tucker, wanders in. He's got cornsilk yellow hair that's always stickin' up when he ain't wearin' the straw hat his ma sent to school with him. He ain't wearin' that hat now as he stares at me there in the infirmary bed. I remember on Big Farm my old hat I used to cover my blond hair.

"You been whipped, J.G?" Tucker asks. Must'a heard about it through that awful Jeb. Bet he told the other boys 'xactly why he thinks I got it, too. Probably it ain't even a true reason.

"Yup." I answer.

"It hurt?"

"Yup."

"Still hurt?"

"Yup."

"Did'ja cry?" I smile a little and shift in the pillows proppin' me up.

"Maybe a lil' bit, but I seen grown men start to howlin' when they get it and I didn't do that."

"Wowie, you're brave, J.G!" Then he comes right to the edge of the bed and looks more serious. "Did'ja hear that Mister e'spelled Row and sent him back to his daddy's farm in Baton Rouge? And that they's gonna move back up North to avoid the war?" He's so innocent, Tucker is, like I was when I first came here.

"I have now."

"Thought you should know, since you 'n him was friends."

"Very considerate of you. Thanks."

"Anytime. Bye, J.G, feel better soon."

"Thanks. Bye, Tucker." He leaves. I decide right then that no matter what Mister says, as soon as my back's healed, I'm runnin' away, finding some soldiers, and joinin' up the rebel army.

I'm gonna go to war.


	11. Chapter 11

I been walkin' for a few days now, and I've found what looks like a fort. I can't really tell from here, but I think their flag is the rebel one. I don't wanna get too close in case they're yankees, though, so I'm standin' on a hilltop squintin' at this bleary red white 'n blue square when a tall boy in a gray coat comes up to me and asks what in the Hell I think I'm doin' up here.

"Tryin' to figure out if that there fort is yankee 'r not." I go back into my old non-school way of talkin' so's he knows I'm a Southerner fer sure. The boy, holdin' a line of different kinds of river fishes, cracks a smile and says he really hopes the fort ain't yankee 'cuz all his stuff is there. I laugh with him and we go there together. He brings me to the captain who's in charge of his company and who needs a new powder boy since his last one blowed himself up. He eyes me kinda suspicious, though.

"You seem kinda young to be a solider, boy. What's yer name and how old exactly?"

I straighten up and puff out my chest and say,

"My name's Jason Jones and I turned twelve years old on December 20, last year. I been goin' to the charity academy since I was eight, and I ran away 'cuz the rebel cause really speaks to my free and Southern nature, sir."

"Huh, if that don't beat all... A boy born on the day of secession wants to join up our company. I'd be crazy to deny you, 'o course. One thing though: If you're such a smart little schoolboy, read that sign." He says, pointing. I can't make out the letters very well. I had this problem a lot at the school, too, where I couldn't see very well.

"I can't see the letters. Perhaps if you'd be so kind as to write 'em on a paper, sir?" The rest of the men and boys standin' around laugh a bit at that. The captain sighs.

"Oh for Pete's sake. Coleman! Take him to the opto-tomitrist, will ya?"

"Yes sir!" The boy who found me takes my arm. "Yer gonna be able to see so good when Doctor Martin's done!" He sounds different then I or even the other boys at the school did. I ask him where he's from. "Born in Lousiana and brought up on the good riverboat Sally Mae! What about you?"

"Fredrickson plantation, South Carolina. I got taken in when I was just little and lived there up until I was sent to school in Missouri."

"Huh, you sound kinda like yer from Texas to me. Guess it's just my ears, huh?"

I nod, but I ain't all there. From somewhere in the back of my mind, more memories from before Big Farm surface. A blurry woman's face, talkin' with a Mexi-can accent, sayin' "He's a Republic of his own now... the Republic of Texas... protect him..." I write it off as a dream 'cuz sure as Hell people can't be republics, and even if they could, I learned in school that the Republic of Texas dissolved in 1845, which is a few years before I was even born. We stop in front of a buildin' with a big pair 'o glasses on it.

"Doctor Martin!" Calls out Coleman. An older man opens the door. "Permission to enter with new patient?" The man smiles.

"Permission granted. What do you want, Joey?"

"I gotta new boy here who's in need of some eye help, Doc." He pushes me forward.

"Hiya, sir. Pleasure to meet'cha." I say.

Soon, after a long process of puttin thin glass films together, I'm handed the wire frames with the glass in 'em. I put it on my face. Everything is clearer, suddenly. I can see the little cracks and rocks in the dust around my feet. Looking across the compound I can make out the sign that says "Livestock" on it. What were white blobs before become tiny covered wagons near the entrance of the fort.

"Wow... Does everyone see like this, Joey?" He laughs.

"Far as I know, yeah."

So, I'm taken in as a powder boy, meant to be a private when the long .44 rifles ain't almost as big as I am. I'm fitted with a gray coat with gold trim about my size and matchin' trousers and a thin cotton shirt to put under it. I get a cap too. It's also gray with gold 'cuz the yankees got an official uniform color so we gotta do it too and do it better. I also get worn old black leather boots about two sizes too big 'cuz while I like Row's old boots they're gettin' kinda tight and worn out. I'll still prob'ly go barefoot when I can 'cuz it feels best to me.

I'm taught to fire the smaller .22s along with the other three younger boys in our company and soon, we're marchin' towards Antietam to fight the yankees. I dunno where Antietam is, but it sounds excitin' to go to places I didn't know exist. We might run into yankee companies along the way, so we might get little fights. But there's forty-five men and boys and one big cannon in our lil company, so I think we'll do alright.

When I was little and sittin' under the cottonpuff trees on Big Farm, dozin' off in the heat and listenin' to the workers around me singin' as they went, I never thought I'd be marchin' into war with a gray jacket on my back ready to fight boys in blue. I wonder if the other boys on their farms and towns and riverboats thought the same.

And so, as we march along, me and Joey ridin' on the big horses pullin' our munitions and supply wagon, we start singin' to break the spirit of any yankee who thinks we're depressed by this war:

_I'll place my knapsack on my back,_

_My rifle on my shoulder,_

_I'll march away to the firing line,_

_And kill that Yankee soldier,_

_And kill that Yankee soldier,_

_I'll march away to the firing line,_

_And kill that Yankee soldier!_


	12. Chapter 12

It's hot as Hell in this place, and me and the other boys are goin' swimmin'. We're camped by a river and there's a place by a bridge where there's a nice clear shady pool. A perfect swimmin' hole. We all dump our heavy wool jackets, caps and cotton shirts with our knapsacks which are really just bags we got from home that we fashioned to go on our backs with ropes and cotton strips. One thing we don't got a problem with is findin' cloths to make patches with or shine boots. We do need to hunt for our food though, 'cuz we can only keep stuff so long. I hear the yankee army's got preserved foods made in a factory. Yuck. They can keep that stuff. I'd rather starve then eat salt-pork and chemical-filled veggies the rest of my life.

My company stops a little way from the bridge and we all take off towards the hole. Stripped down to our waists, all us boys from the whole brigade scream and whoop like a wild pack 'o Indians as we race each other to the water and soon the sound of our shoutin' 'n splashin' fills the air. The olders and officers are left to set up the camp without us young'uns gettin' in the way or makin' trouble, and we get to cool off, so everyone wins.

I show off and dive down to try and grab somethin'. I get a rock and soon we're all seein' what we can grab in the murky, cool water. Joey comes up with a big crawdad by the tail and all us farmboys gather 'round to look at it.

"Roach 'o the river, they call these things." He announces. "I do opine that if that's true then real roaches must taste like the nectar of God!"

I always found that sayin' weird, so I say so: "Yeah but what kinda nectar does God have? He ain't a bumblebee or butterfly or nothin'." Joey looks at the crawdad and then at me and says, "We-yyl... maybe since God created all 'o life, He can make nectar in his hands if he wants. Or maybe he just makes it in the form 'o the best foods, which sure ain't our rations!" We been eatin' salt-pork for a long time that one of the other companies raided from a yankee camp, which is how I know it's disgustin'. In fact we're all real sick of it, even the officers I heard, and hope other food presents itself soon.

"Yum, ya mean like home-made biscuits 'n thick chicken gravy?" One boy asks.

"Back at the plantation our cook made real good fried chicken and pecan pie!" I say real excited.

"Peach pie, fried catfish and ice tea?" Another chimes in. Soon all of 'em are shoutin' out what their Godly nectar is, and Joey yells for 'em to be quiet.

"I think, that the best food in all the world is my mama's crawdad and chilisauce! Y'all can like yer biscuits and pies all ya want, but in my mind nothin' can beat good Cajun cookin'!"

All the others agree that that's good food. Then the crawdad sorta hisses and we all wanna hold him since he seems pretty steamed about bein' held by his tail like that. Joey lets us all hold it and one boy gets himself pinched and we're all laughin' and splashin' at him and havin' a good time.

Soon, though, we hear voices with accents that don't sound a thing like ours. Yankees. Or Indians. Both are out to kill us, we know. We all kinda huddle under the bridge, stayin' as quiet as a pile of ten boys in a river can be. I clamp my hand over my mouth to keep a yelp in as somethin' brushes at my foot. Probably a crawdad or turtle. Maybe a big fish. Scared me half to death, though.

"Hey, look at that! We can swim there, guys!" shouts one of the yankee boys.

We rebels all look at each other, assessin' what we got to fight 'em off. We're mostly farmboys, so we can all climb trees lightnin' fast and most can prob'ly throw rocks with decent accuracy. I stuck my huntin' knife Big Farm Mister gave me for the Christmas I was eight in my boots in case I needed it, and I know some 'o the other boys do the same, but we all left our rifles back at the camp because we wasn't thinkin' o' huntin' or battlin'. Joey Coleman, who at 19 is the oldest of us, motions for all of us to follow him as he heads for the bank where our boots are hidden under a bush. We may be a bunch of farmboys, but we ain't stupid.

One of the yankee boys is sittin' on the bank, keepin' watch. He sees us and cries out in surprise. The other boys come runnin' fast. They're all rangin' in age from about Joey's size to one little boy, littler than Company E's powder boy Johnny, even, whose dark blue coat goes down to his knees with the gold cuffs covering his hands. All of us, rebel and yankee are frozen, starin' at each other. Joey is the first to talk.

"We were all just leavin'. Y'all can have this pool if y'like. We're goin' berrying."

The little yankee boy speaks up.

"I wanna ask, actually: What kind of berries grow around here that won't hurt us? We're awful sick of our rations, but we don't want it to end badly if we eat local foods." The other boys murmur in agreement, rememberin' I'm sure, some poor member of their company who made his final mistake with the local berries.

Joey scratches his head, as if he don't really know why the yankee kid don't know this stuff. "Well, 'round this time of the year there's blackberries and huckleberries, and probably a few wild veggies still left too. Be careful with those things though. If y'all mess up and pick poison parsnip or poisonberries instead, it'll be yer last meal. I just don't mess with the veggies 'cuz even I can't always tell, not bein' from around here."

I don't understand how they'd ever think bright red poisonberries are okay to eat. I also can tell poison parsnip (which I always called cowsbane) and wild veggies apart fine, but I guess it's one of those things you gotta grow up doin'. I bet these yankee boys don't even know what wild veggies are s'posed to look like. They might all poison themselves and die, even. That thought makes me sadder than it should. I can't help gettin' sad at the thought of that poor little boy who don't even look ten twitchin' and convulsin' and frothin' at the mouth with cowsbane poisonin' til his lungs can't take air no more and he a-phyxiates to death. Poor thing.

"We can show y'all what's good to eat, if ya want. Ain't a good fight if all the enemies is doin' is gettin' poisoned and I guess we're all sick 'o that salt-pork, hey, Joey?" I say, grinnin'.

Soon ten boys in cotton shirts, black boots and gray caps are leadin' a dozen blue-capped boys through the woods, shoutin' back 'n forth. We get to the berry patch we'd seen on the way up here and are soon fillin' our emptied knapsacks with the purple berries. I'm explainin' to the little yankee what bad plants look like, since he says he wants to be a plant expert when he gets bigger and the war's over, and I don't see no harm in spreadin' important facts like this around.

"See, this here bush might look good, but it ain't. It's poisonberries. They taste sour and burnin' in your throat and eventually you'll throw it all back up along with whatever you et or drank before the berries 'n probably die from it."

A few other boys, even some of our own, join the group as I go to a still, shaded part of the river and point out a bushy green plant with a cluster of white flowers on top. "This here thing looks a lot like a wild parsnip or somethin', but it ain't. It's water hemlock. Back in South Carolina we called it cowsbane 'cuz if your cow et it, she'd be dead within the hour. It tastes sweet, like a wild veggie at first, but then it burns in your mouth and y' start to seizin' 'n frothin' within a few minutes if ya swallow even a bite of it." The boys all seem to shudder as one at the very thought.

"What do you do if someone does eat only a bite, to give them a chance to live?" Asks one 'o the older yankee boys. "I wouldn't ask except my oldest brother took a bite and ended up going into convulsions and dying a month ago, and I'd like to be able to save other boys from such a fate in the future."

"You gotta get charcoal from the fire into their belly, which might be hard since they clench up 'n shake like a demon's got into 'em. But you gotta force their jaws open and get it into 'em, then just hope for it t' soak up the poison. If y'know you et it by accident, then drink all the water, milk, or whiskey you can to dilute the poison, maybe even so much your belly gets overfull and ya throw it up before it can hurt ya!"

I learned all 'o this from Ol' Cook Hattie on Big Farm, who'd been there since she was just little, made t' take care 'o Mister from the time he was born, and knew everythin', it seemed.

Our lesson on what we can and can't eat done, we all go back to the rest of the boys in the hot, sticky berry patch. I feel the sharp prick of a skeeter bitin' at my neck and I smack it and look at the blood spot on my hand. I hear a yelp from a yankee that got bit and turn to his direction and yell, "Y'all better slap that skeeter off 'o you before he gives you the fever 'n ague!"

The yankee boys go on to all complain about the heat and the skeeters, and we rebels ask 'em what berrying is like up in their land, if not hot and buggy. They say they don't do much berrying up North 'cuz if they ain't rich sons 'o businessmen and factory foremen they work in the factory floors from the time they're just little, and even sometimes the coalmines. We tell 'em how berries are a big part of our food here in the South 'cuz we're mostly all poor farmboys and riverboat brats and a couple sons o' planters, and how workin' inside in a factory sure sounds better then workin' a field out in the glarin' hot sun sometimes.

Before we can start to argue about farms versus factories, Joey continues the previous conversation by askin' the bluebellies what their favorite foods from home are.

"Clam chower's one of the best things! You have to try it if you're ever up north!" One says.

"Taylor ham and eggs on a kaiser roll is my favorite!" Another says.

"Cod!"

"My father used to order dried-out salmon, all the way from Oregon Territory!"

"Succotash!"

It's strange how different we are from them. We talk different, we look different (lots o' the yankee boys look to be immigrants or sons of 'em anyway) and we eat different, too. They're actually real nice, for all I've heard about yankees. They got different music from our cheery tunes, too, it turns out.

Joey starts it by hummin' then singin' as he picks the best of the berries, and the rest of us join in, 'cuz we wouldn't be rebels if we didn't know "Dixie Land":

_"I wish I was in Dixie, Hur-ray! Hur-ray!_

_In Dixie's land I'll take my stand to live and die in Dixie_

_Away, away, away down south in Dixie..."_

The little yankee boy is the first to counter us with their favorite song we've heard at all 'o their camps we passed by, "Battle Hymn of the Republic":

_"Glory, glory, hallejuah!_

_Glory, glory, halleujah!_

_Glory, glory halleujah!_

_His truth is marching on!"_

And so, Johnny Reb and Billy Yank pick berries side-by-side. We're all havin' fun 'n laughin', inturrupting each other and pokin' fun at how the other side sounds, and the in the middle of my shoutin' _"I wish I was in Dixie, HOO-RAY, HOO-RAY!"_ over their _"We'll all shout the battle cry of freee-DOM!"_ I see him.

He looks a lot like me, but without glasses, a bit older, and a part of hair stickin' up on top of his head. He's wearin' a blue uniform, and I dunno why, but I wanna take my knife and fight him right here. He looks at me, and I can tell he feels the same. I quickly make my way deeper into the bushes where he can't see me no more. I feel kinda shaky afterward and Joey asks what's the matter and I say I just feel sick is all, probably the heat, so I go back to the shade of the river for a bit, put my feet in the cold, clear water, and think.

Strange. I feel like I know that man, but if he's a yankee, I can't possibly. It's real strange.


	13. Chapter 13

We're gettin' into territory that none of us know anythin' about, 'cept Joey, 'cuz bein' a riverboater's son from Louisiana, he's been all up-and-down the Mississippi and a couple other rivers besides. There's still trees though, and one thing boys like doin', war or no war, is climbin' trees.

We're all racin' each other through 'em shoutin' and laughin' and generally playin' while not bein' pests as we're s'posed to do when the branch gives under me and there's a loud rip as I catch on somethin' and then I'm caught and stopped. Joey drops down and comes to look at me. My toes are right above his head.

"Got yerself stuck there, J.G.?" He asks, hardly containin' the stupid grin on his face. More 'o the boys are droppin' down now to look at me hangin' there.

"Shut yer mouth 'n git me down!" I say, strugglin'. I'm stuck by my coat, the thick wool at the shoulderblade area holdin' fast in the tree. As such I can't much move my arms or I'd've pulled myself back up already.

"Hah! Looky here ever'one! J.G Farmboy's got himself stuck up in a tree!" The other boys are lookin' way too amused and I swear soon as I get down from here they're gonna git it and git it good. Joey fakes a look of wide-eyed innocence. "Wowie, J.G! Guess it ain't by yankee or workin' yer gonna die, but by a grand hangin'! Maybe I oughta send Benny fer his drum t' send ya away!"

"Listen up, smart-aleck Coleman: I'm gonna yell fer the Captain and yer gonna be in trouble fer not helpin' me! Lemme dOwn!" My voice is just startin' to change over so it cracks a lot, 'specially when I'm upset like I am now.

"Sheesh, keep yer britches on, Jones." Joey says, still grinnin', "I dunno how t' get ya down without pullin' ya and do ya really wanna wear those gross-lookin' yellow butternut coats? I thought not, so hang in there... hahah." I growl and am about to send another insult down there, when I hear the refrains of "The Battle Cry of Freedom" down the road. It's a yankee song and I'm hangin' right over their path.

"Shoot! Yankees! Run, boys, run!" Joey yelps as the others scatter.

"Hey! What about me! Come on! Lemme down!" I can see their wagons now. They got a ambulance, even. Must be a whole brigade. "Guys!" I can't believe they'd leave me to die hangin' in a tree, beat to death by some bluebelly yankees. The scouts come first and see me right off. They're a couple'a boys a little older than I am.

"Hey, Mikey, come and look at this!" I sulk as much as I can and blow my hair outta my face. The one part right down the bridge of my nose just flops right back into place. I give the yankee the dirtiest look I can manage, hangin' in a tree.

"Wow. Wonder who hung out this little Secesh to dry?" His friend, Mikey, I guess, nudges my boot with the barrel of his rifle. I growl deep in my throat and feel my face burn with anger. Secesh is short for "secessionist" Joey says, and all of us rebels know it to be a mean name that the yankees call us, kinda like how we call 'em yankees and bluebellies and even mudsills. "Hey Jimmy, think we ought'a help him down?" Wait... he's Southern! Southern bluebellies are gonna be my downfall? How much worse can it get?!

"Here, Mikey, you go up the tree and try to unhook his jacket. And you," he looks right at me, "don't ever say that all of us Southern Unionists are terrible people. We still know to help one of our own when they're in trouble, even if yer a rotten slave-holdin' grayback!"

"I ain't one o' you bluebellies and I never will be. Harrah for the Confederacy! Down with the Union!" And then in a move I'll later think back on as pure irony, I drop outta the tree and hit the ground.

Then I scamper away and find the other boys, swattin' at skeeters 'n mournin' the loss of poor, poor me.

"And I see what a whole lotta work y'all put into savin' me, too!" I huff as I join 'em. They all look on in surprise until I say, "They're Southerners. Still Lincoln-boys, though." We all hiss and curse quietly at the traitors.

When we make it back to the camp, Captain Johnson is waitin' for us. Of course, the first thing he notices is my ripped coat.

"Jones! What happened to you?"

"I got stuck up in a tree, is all." I say, not mentionin' the yankee brigade. The Captain sighs and points me to_ our_ brigade's hospital cart.

"Go see if they can fix it up, boy. If not we don't have any more gray coats, you know!"

"Yessir!" I call out, runnin' towards the cart. The kind nurses take my coat off to go fix it up, sayin' I can hang around, as they'll be done fast. One notices somethin' as she's close to me to gather up some cloth fer wound dressin's for the companies that've seen minor scuffles already.

"Hey, Jones," she says, and I looks up, "you ever been checked for graybacks?"

"No ma'am."

"Well... I think you've got 'em. We'll wash your hair in carbolic soap and hope for it, alright?"

"Yes, ma'am." Yuck, lice. That 'splains why my head's been itchy. Thought it was just skeeters but I guess not. A funny thing, though: Yankees call us "graybacks" because until recently all of us wore gray coats. Also I think they know it's another word for lice, and are comparin' us with vermin which ain't kind at all.

I feel kinda off, actually, and I don't think it's the lice. I feel kinda hot, but shivery at the same time, and now that I ain't movin' I feel a little achy. One 'o the nurses walkin' by notices me there and asks if I'm okay. I manage out a "yes ma'am." and she sorta frowns.

"You don't look too well. I'm gonna go and get somethin' to help with that." She comes back with a bottle and a strange instrument.

She sees me lookin' a little scared at the thing in her hand so she smiles in a friendly way. "This," she indicates the instrument, "Is a thermometer. My daddy was a doctor in Europe and brought it back. It tells us if you've got a fever or not. We're probably the only brigade in the whole Southern army that's got one, so feel lucky."

I would've, if I hadn't also felt sick. She has me put the thing in my mouth for a while and then she pulls it out and looks me over. "You're runnin' a fever all right. You got measles and pox before?"

"Yes, ma'am." I say.

"How about mumps and scarlet fever?"

"I ain't had scarlet fever yet, ma'am, but I got mumps as a kid."

"Tsk..." She looks me over harder. "Well, you don't got a rash anywhere so it ain't that." She squishes my arm a little and asks if I been fightin' or gotten cut by anything as of recent. I answer I haven't. She nods and keeps lookin'. "Your limbs are in good order and you ain't been injured yet so it certainly can't be dropsy or infection, so you likely got malaria, like they called it at my school up North. It's easy for soliders to get, 'specially with all the runnin' around and swimmin' in odd places you young'uns do."

"What's malaria?" I get scared 'cuz I ain't heard that word before. The nurse puts her hand on my shoulder 'cuz she knows I'm scared.

"You boys call it 'fever 'n augue.' Or, I grew up callin it the 'shakes.' You get it by bein' out in the swamps too long. One 'o the things it does is cause a sky-high fever that'll make you start shiverin'. Lucky for you, we got a cure for it." She pours me somethin' in a cup, "Here, drink this to help you sleep. It'll be a few days before we can get some quinine to dose you with to cure it. You been coughin' at all?"

"No, ma'am." I always thought skeeters caused fevers, not the swamps. I guess Sarah was wrong, then.

"Well at least we know it ain't consumption and you ought'a be thankful for that." As if to make her point one o' the men from Company C starts coughin' real gross, wet coughs in his bed.

"Yes, ma'am." I drink the stuff in the cup. It tastes sweet, and I catch a glimpse of the bottle and read 'Mother's Helper And Best Sleep Aide' on it. Yum... This is the stuff they give to babies in towns so's they don't cry all night. I'd always wondered why the lil'uns drank it without complaint. It's 'cuz it tastes like candy.

I'm helped into one o' the beds in the nurses' wagon and I fall asleep.

Through the next few days I wake up, sometimes throw up the sips of soup they're gettin' into me, and fall back asleep, in a haze. I'm seein' things, I think, when Sarah's hoverin' over me and tellin' me to not give up just yet, like when I was little and got measles real bad. I wake up beggin' to be put nearer to the fire 'cuz I'm cold, so cold, and they put more blankets on me, and I'm out again.

I start talkin' crazy, too, since sometimes the nurses are lookin' at me funny I wake and say somethin' and once it's Joey, and he says somethin' about not knowin' I knew more than English and then I'm out again...

After a week of this they start wakin' me to give me a bitter somethin'. Soon I start to get better. As I stop havin' the awful fever dreams and wake up real, one of the nurses asks me if I got a parent from Mexico. I don't, at least, I don't think I do. I don't think I'd be blond and blue-eyed if I did, since Mexicans are dark-haired and eyed. The nurse says I was talkin' Spanish when I was out. Strange. After a week of gettin' medicine I learn that two of the younger boys fell sick a day after me and neither of 'em made it.

I did, and I'm back on my feet the next day.


	14. Chapter 14

We're gettin' ready to do our first real battle, against yankees who wanna kill us. I'm both excited and terrified at the same time. I'm given a rifle to put on my back and I have my knife in my belt and our battle flag in my hands. As our boy who was born on secession day, I get to carry the flag with it's bright red background, dark blue X and the clean white stars standin' out on the blue. Drummer Boy Benny is actin' as powder boy 'cuz it was our powder boy that died of fever back when I was sick. He's got a bright orange band on his arm to show he's under twelve, so maybe he'll be spared.

We've been told to holler and whoop like demons from the underworld when we charge, to scare the enemies. We all tried doin' it soon as we were told we were expected to, and the sound really does seem otherworldly, 'specially when we all hit as high as we can with our voices. I can't imagine what a thousand men and boys all doin' it sounds like. Probably terrifyin'.

Then we do charge, shoutin' and whoopin' and makin' all the noise we can. Then we ain't doin' it no more as we start gettin' hit. I jam my flagpole in the ground and take my rifle from my back and start tryin' to fire it. I need to reload, so I grab a cartridge from the pouch on my belt, tear it open with my teeth and go to put it in the rifle. As I fumble with my gun, Joey grabs me and shouts something and starts draggin' me away, then I hear a thud and a cry of pain next to me, and I look over and see Joey clutching his chest as a dull red stain grows under his hand.

He goes limp and his eyes lose all their light and all at once I see what he was tryin' t' get me t' run from. I see the cannon fire straight into our powder wagon and am blasted down by the force of it explodin', even all the way out here, and I hear men and boys shriekin' in agony as they're burnt and blown up 'n the cannon booms again 'n I'm feelin' kinda dizzy 'n weak 'n then everything fades away.

I wake to pitiful groanin' all around me and the sound of cheerin' right in front of me towards the yankee line. I stand up, and 'cuz I happen to be right by the tattered flag I pick it back up and look around. I ain't hurt at all. Joey is lying there, his brown eyes still half open and the front of his gray coat stained dull red where the bullet went into his chest. I try to hold back tears as the phrase fer dead men Joey told me echos in my head: _Yankee or Rebel, every boy shot on the field was somebody's darlin'._ Benny, our powder-slash-drummer boy is dead too. He's burned so bad he's hardly recognizable save for his small size and the torn orange band on his arm. I nudge him with my foot and he just flops over. _He was some mama's lil' boy, that she ain't never gon' see his sweet face 'gain, never gon' hear him say "Mama, looky here at what I done in school" ever-ever 'gain..._

The whole company is gone, in fact, 'cuz we weren't too big to start with, having lost about twenty to the hospitals with fever and consumption and typhoid and dropsy, and the rest of us were all in formation around our powder wagon when the yankee cannon blew it up. _They were all somebody's world, that those somebody's ain't never gon' see 'gain..._ I hear a terrible screamin' and I see it's Bess one of our horses, her legs a'flailin' as she tries to get up even though she's trapped under the burnt up wagon and burnt herself horribly. I see she's bleedin' and her back legs ain't workin', so I pet her head to calm her, put the barrel of my rifle against her forehead and pull my trigger. There's a loud bang, my arms jerk back with the recoil, and the screamin' stops.

Breathin' hard and tryin' not to cry 'cuz boys don't cry, not even thinkin' of how many boys on that field _ain't never gon' come walkin' back to their front porch with the dog jumpin' at their feet and their mama or sweetheart or even family grinnin' that their boy come back..._ I stand back up, pick up my flag, and look around again. Then I see him. Holdin' a yankee flag and starin' at me again is the soldier that looks like me. I jam my flagpole into the ground, put up my rifle and try to fire, but it just clicks uselessly. I reach for my cartridge pouch and find it empty. Damn. Some mudsill sonuva-gun must'a taken all my ammo when I was out. I look at the soldier helplessly, and he makes a motion with his hand that means "I ain't got nothin' neither, boy."

"Who are you?" I ask out loud. He don't answer. "I know it was you in the berry patch last summer, too. What's yer name, Yankee?" Still nothin'. I give him the worst glare I can, bein' a thirteen-year-old with no ammo and tears in his eyes, and he turns silently and walks back to the yankee side where I can hear them celebratin' the fact they took a bunch'a rebel boys away from their families fer good:

_"The Union forever,_

_Hurrah! boys, hurrah!_

_Down with the traitors,_

_Up with the stars;_

_While we rally round the flag, boys,_

_Rally once again,_

_Shouting the battle cry of Freeeeee-dom!"_

I feel a feelin' of anger risin' up in my stomach and to this day I swear I saw forty or fifty blue caps look over their barricade in shock to watch one scrawny rebel boy singin' out at the top 'o his hardly-changed voice in reply to their song,

_"Our Dixie forever,_

_She's never had a loss!_

_Down with the eagle,_

_And up with the cross;_

_We will rally 'round the bonnie flag,_

_We'll rally once again,_

_Shout, shout the battle cry of Freeeeee-dom!"_

Every alive southerner on that field starts cheerin' for me as I walk up to a man wearin' a gray officer's uniform.

"Sir, my name is J.G Jones of Company 6 of the Independence brigade, and we was blown up by a yankee's lucky shot into our powder wagon. Can I be allowed to join as a private in your company, to keep up the fight?" He nods, still I think pretty shocked at the fact I did somethin' like and and didn't get shot.

My friends may all be dead and in Heaven, but I ain't licked yet, and I'm gonna fight 'til the end. And so, my new company marches off to the beat of the most traitorous song of all the rebel ones, _Bonnie Blue Flag_.

_"Hurrah! Hurrah!_

_For Southern rights, hurrah!_

_Hurrah for the bonnie blue flag that bears a single star!"_


	15. Chapter 15

It's been a few years since the First Battle in my life, and I'm probably about fifteen. Maybe sixteen. I ain't been keepin' track. I joined up one of the older companies in a bigger brigade, with General Robert E. Lee himself commandin'. I ain't seen the yankee that looks like me since First Battle. We're losin' the war, I 're also in Texas. All those years ago when I first joined, Joey was right sayin' the Texas accents sound a lot like me. It was also a far march to here. We're tired, but we ain't gonna give up yet.

We're singin' to beat on the yankees' morale, lettin' 'em know that we may be losin' right now, but we ain't down about it.

_"Advance the flag of Dixie, hurrah! hurrah!_

_In Dixie's land I'll take my stand,_

_to live and die for Dixie-"_

Oh, those yankee boys are clever, makin' up lyrics to our tunes, and they think they can git a rise outta us by singin' over us:

_"We'll all go down to Dixie, away! away!_

_Each Dixie boy must understand _

_that he must find his Uncle Sam..."_

Then the fightin' starts and we ain't singin' no more. I figured out a way to make the cannons fire faster then ever, so I'm in charge of that. That means I gotta stand right by the powder wagon. I'm kinda scared, considerin' what happened last time I was in a battle with a powder wagon. I don't see the mysterious yankee in the screaming crowds of blue, but I know he must be here.

Soon, we're outta cannonballs and I have to go and fight with the rest of the rebel brigade, so I do. I'm firin' the rifle, a .44 now 'cuz I'm full-grown 'n I start out doin' our Rebel Yell but soon I devolve 'nto screamin' every insult I know at 'em and when I see the cannon aim right at me, I stop dead.

I see a flash of orange hair under a dark blue cap with gold trim and and I look right into the yankee solider's green eyes, dark as a forest at night and right before I hear the boom 'o the cannon, could that be recognition that I see in the eyes of that orange-haired yankee and then I'm on the ground and pain is explodin' through my whole body 'n then I feel nothin'...

_**A/N: Short, I know, but intense. Also I find it pretty amusing how for almost every confederate song there is a union version. I bet J.G. and Alfred would get into arguments over who sang it first.**_


	16. Chapter 16

I wake up in all the pain in the world. My head's throbbin' so much I feel dizzy 'n hazy 'n my leg hurts so bad I can't hardly feel it on the ground. My glasses are lyin' cracked just out 'o my reach, which might explain why everythin's so blurry. I look at my hand. I'm still wearin' them stupid yellow gloves commanders of fire teams are made to wear. They're all leathery and really uncomfortable. I manage to look back at my leg, which I soon learn ain't there. There's only a pool of blood 'n a stump endin' right below my hip. I lay back and try to get in order where I am and what I'm doin' hopin' to clear my mind.

I'm lyin' on a field with one leg blasted to bits by a yankee cannon. I know I'm probably gonna die, but I ain't gonna die without a fight. Though bleedin' the way I am, and with my head still poundin', I'm feelin' less-than ready to actually fight.

As I'm lyin' there knowin' I'm gonna die and thinkin' to them back at Big Farm, _"Look, see, look where yer lil' J.G ended up, captain of a fire-team..."_ Some black boots come and their owner stops and looks down at me. I look up at him. I can hear the boomin' in the background, hazy and bleary like my head. The cannon must've knocked out my hearin' some, too.

The owner of the boots picks me up and sets me in a wagon. I can see the dark blue of his coat as he turns and picks up somethin' else. It's my bedroll and glasses. Everything looks like it's slow motion and blurry, and the sounds are so far away, it seems like I ain't really there. He puts the glasses, broken as they are, on my face, and puts the rolled up blanket and spare shirt with my old .22 in the middle by my side. The wagon rattles off, with me and all my things in it, and I fall into a deep sleep.

I wake up to a unfamiliar room and two hushed mens' voices. I guess my hearin' is fine after all. My head still hurts, but I feel warm and clean and I can see my dirty, ragged gray coat hung on the end of the bed. I'm in my gauzy thin cotton shirt and just my pants, I guess. My leg-stump don't hurt no more, which I find strange, since gettin' yer leg taken off is supposed to be awful, so I take a look at it.

It gets the two men's attention when I yell out in surprise at my leg bein' back, good as new, except, as I'm puttin' my hands all over it to see if it's really there, for a thick scar all the way around. I know I must'a died now, I must be in Heaven, with Joey and Benny and all of 'em and maybe my ma and daddy and for sure poor Sarah who Missy wrote to me and said was sick with consumption 'n I wanna get up and run to see all of 'em but a blond man comes from across the room and pushes me down.

"Now now, boy, you'd best stay down and let your head clear itself up. It took an hour for your leg to heal, so you aren't quite well yet." He ain't Southern, that's for sure, but he ain't a yankee neither. Maybe he's from Canada.

"But sir I gotta go t' see Sarah 'n Joey 'n Benny-"

"Who? What are you on about? Where do you think you are?"

"Heaven, sir, 'cuz otherwise my leg wouldn'a healed up like it did, all whole 'gain and-" Then the man's eyes kind of soften a little, like he knows what he says next is gonna confuse the Hell outta me.

"You're not in Heaven, love. You're alive. You survived the battle."

"But... my leg... it was blasted t' bits... How'd it grow back if I ain't dead and gone to Heaven?"

"You were right, Alfred. He doesn't know anything about his nature." Alfred steps forward. He's the yankee man, the one that I been seein' everywhere.

"You!" I cry out and try to get up to face him. The blond man tries to hold me down but as I squirm he stops tryin', sayin',

"If you're that determined to, then go ahead and sit up, I suppose."

I do, and feel dizzy, but I glare at the yankee. He looks back at me, then reaches out to brush the hair from the bridge of my nose. A weird feelin' comes over me as he touches the hair and I slap his hand away. "Stop that! Goddamn Yank!" Despite my spittin' and glarin' he stays eerily calm.

"Jason G. Jones... personification of the Confederate States of America, right?"

"Whaddya mean, person-fication? Some bluebelly garbage they feed y'all? Is that what it is!?" Alfred sits on the chair across from my bed.

"England'll explain to you."

"What? I'm confused! Lemme go so I can get back to the brigade! The general'll have my head if I'm gone too long! I'm the best fire-team leader he's got! I can't afford to be held hostage by some crazy mudsill sonuva-"

The blond man with the green eyes puts his hand on my shoulder which shuts me up quick.

"You're a very special sort of person, you know. Unable to die by human hands, able to live for thousands of years... It's a pity you don't know anything about it."

I cross my arms and glare at Alfred the Yankee. "I'mma let you tell me all about it, but only 'cuz I bet y'all won't let me go 'til you do." Blond man motions to Alfred. Alfred looks me right in the eyes.

"I knew it as soon as I saw you that you were different than those other boys. My country, the United States of America, had a war with ourselves. Our kind, 'nations', represent our people and their health. When mine started fighting themselves, and I didn't feel any distress, I knew something had happened. What happened was you. You came into existance when the Confederacy seceded, maybe even before then. You aren't just a confederate solider, Jason. You are the Confederacy itself. Or were. The war's over now."

"Y'all are a couple'a crazy-ass yankees..." I muttered. I didn't like the fact I lost a battle. Not at all. But the nation thing explained why I thought the south was so great, even with our poor whites bein' beaten out in prices by planters and the planters then mistreatin' the slaves... It explained why Sarah thought I was an angel when the welts on my back healed up right before her eyes. It really did explain why my leg somehow grew back. Maybe Alfred and blondie weren't crazy.

"Prove it." I say. Alfred pulls out a knife- my knife, I realize -and holds it out, handle first to me. He takes his jacket off and then undoes his shirt, showin' his bare chest to me.

"Stab me. Anywhere on my body."

I do, right in his stomach, thinkin' if he's crazy and this is lies at least then he'll be dead. It takes all my willpower to not twist the knife to cause him more pain. He grunts a bit as I pull the knife back out. Bein' a huntin' knife the blade's about as long as my hand and got a serrated edge for carvin'. Right now it's bloody down to the hilt, and the deep red blood also oozes from the wound in Alfred's stomach. Then it stops. The bleedin' stops, and as blondie uses a cloth to wipe away the blood, I see that there isn't even a scar. Something in the back of my mind tells me that it ain't that strange, too, that of course his kind would heal.

Of course _my_ kind would heal.

"Is that enough proof for you?" Alfred asks.

I nod. Even if that nation stuff ain't true which I'm startin' to think it is, there's _somethin'_ goin' on here.

"So... I'm not just some Southern soldier... I am the South? Like all of it?" Both of them nod at me.

Somethin' in me wants to believe them, so even though I don't trust Alfred and blondie, I choose to think that 'cuz I heal and don't get older, they were right.


	17. Chapter 17

It's been a long, long time since the war, and I just happened to be thinkin' about it recently. After Alfred and the blond foreigner let me go, I went back to where Big Farm had been. I soon learned that Mister had died in the war, Missus had died in having Missy's little brother, and the boy (another lil boy named Benny to mourn) had died of scarlet fever when he was just five years old. Missy was arguing for her right to keep the farm, bein' the daughter of the house, but the officals weren't goin' for it.

I showed up, as a male resident of the farm got to keep it, then Missy brought up what the people who'd worked the farm were gonna do. I'd looked at the crowd around me, then announced that those who wished to stay could have an acre of non-farmland. In exchange for it, they would work the fields as they always had, and at the end of the season each family would get a part of the profit, which they could either spend or save to buy their own property. Here in the big house, Missy and I as the landlords would get the most money from the crops, but everyone would get something.

Out of the two hundred and fifty former slaves on Big Farm, two hundred stayed under my modifyed sharecroppin' system. Missy and I changed the name of the farm all official-like to Big Farm, since that's what I kept on callin' it anyway. We found where Sarah was buried by her kids and we put a marker there. I grew from fifteen up until I was about nineteen, and stopped. I explained what I'd been told to Missy, and she said she didn't mind outlivin' me 'cuz I'd take care of the farm, and hey, maybe she'd turn out to be special too.

Missy kept gettin' older, though, and on September the 1, 1907, May "Missy" Fredrickson died in her sleep at 75 years old.

I kept the farm, and took on migrant workers to do the labor. They were a rough bunch, and I still don't trust the way they group together and talk in their own language like they're plannin' somethin' and don't want me to know. During the era of prohibition I learned how to set up stills and make my own liquor. It only exploded a few times and I was never arrested. The neighbors got more upset over the Confederate flag I have in my front yard outside of the house, and I don't really care what they say, as what do a bunch of liberals know about anything.

In 1960, the government wanted to reclaim Big Farm, but I didn't let 'em. They thought it was a hoax, my ownin' of it for years and years. They took most of the farmlands, and Allan expanded to be a whole town, just outside of the capital city Colombia. I stayed where I was.

A few years passed in Allan, and my stomach started to sorta always ache, like there was some kinda hardship happenin' that I could feel. I was thinkin' about this and sittin' in my yard alone when three little colored girls, with backpacks on and new dresses called out to me from the sidewalk.

"Whaddya want, girls?" I asked of 'em.

"Can you walk with us to school, please, mister?" The oldest said, her sisters hidin' behind her as I looked 'em over.

"The colored school's five blocks from here. Ain't y'all got someone who kin drive you?"

"No, sir, we don't. Our mama's gotta work as Miss Norman's cleanin' lady and Papa's gotta be at the office to give 'em coffee by eight!"

They said they didn't wanna walk alone on account 'o the mean white boys callin' em names. The pain in my stomach makin' me cross, I asked 'em what they thought they'd accomplish by botherin' a white man to take 'em and they looked sad, said "You're right, sorry mister..." and walked away. Damned crazy Negro kids.

I never did figure out what the feelin' in my stomach was. It went away, after clawin' and screamin' the citizens of the South stopped havin' colored schools and white schools and mixed 'em. I don't think that's such a good idea, seein' as the white kids'll likely bully the blacks, but that ain't none 'o my concern.

And so I passed the years, on my land, until 2001, when terrorists attacked the Twin Towers all the way in New York City.


	18. Chapter 18

I'm just lyin' in bed on the morning of September 11, 2001, thinkin' I might go see a movie or somethin' later, or take Skipper, the dog, to the river, when I feel it. It's like an explosion in my head, and only my head. It makes me cry out and Skipper looks up from his bed with his ears all pricked like he knows somethin's wrong as I hit the floor, holdin' my head 'cuz facin' down pressin' on the sides of my head seems to be the only way it feels better. I manage to get over to the TV and get it on, Skipper jumpin' at me and whinin'.

"'M alright, Skip, it's okay, 'm alright." I tell him, pettin' his head.

The newslady is talkin' about how a plane appeared to have crashed into the World Trade Center towers. As she's talkin' another goes in. The pain in my head doubles and I'm on the ground again. I don't notice I'm cryin' until the phone's ringin' and Skip's howlin' like he always does when the phone goes and I manage to get up to the phone and I answer it and manage out,

"Cain't ya call later?"

* * *

><p>I'd been called by Alfred, the yankee boy from long ago, to come to New York City fast, 'cuz there's a meetin' with all of the nations in the world to decide what to do about the Twin Tower Attacks, which turned out to be terrorists. My opinion is that we should figure out where the terrorists came from (it's probably Mexico) and blow 'em up right back.<p>

But I have to go to the meeting to get a say in what to do. So I take one last look at my little house, as I have a feelin' I won't be comin' back for a while, and get in my red truck to go to the airport in Colombia, South Carolina, and from there to New York City.

I ain't never been on a plane before, and I find it a bit frightnin', but I think I did impress the lovely stewardess when I figured out my seatbelt on the first time. For now, I look out the window, and wonder what New York's like. I ain't never been further north than the old Missouri Line. Gosh, it sounds excitin'.

All too soon the plane is landin' and that is a scary experience. It's cold and cloudy when I get outside and I put my red plaid huntin' jacket on straight away. I look at the paper in my hands and find it fairly easy to read. Directions to the hotel where all of the nations are stayin'. I look around to figure out what to do. I see a woman stand on a streetcorner and wave her hand at a yellow taxicab, then get into it when it stops. I do the same and soon am standin' in front of one myself.

"I need to go here, please, sir." I tell the driver, who stinks of grease and dirt. Disgustin' Mexicans, I swear. But I show him my paper, get in anyway and we're off to the hotel. I give him some of the money Alfred sent to me and he drives away.

Good God, this hotel's huge. Twenty stories at least. Someone bumps me and shouts for me to move and my hand goes for my pistol in my belt 'cuz I've just been on a plane for three hours and ain't gonna take nothin' from some rude yankee but I stop myself. Yankees don't much appreciate it when they find you're carryin' a concealed gun, I've learned. Dunno why they're that way about it, 'cuz I got a permit, but they don't like it, so here in their land, just so I don't draw attention to myself, I will oblige. When in Rome, is what they say, I guess. I look back at my directions paper and see "Tell the receptionist you are here for the UN Summit."

I walk into the place, a big, fancy room with a fountain and windows all around where pleasant music plays. There's a big desk in the middle of the room, and I approach it with caution. The pretty blond girl working the computer systems looks up at me as I walk up. "Welcome to New York's Mandarin Oriental Hotel, how may I help you?"

"UN summit, ma'am?" She raises an eyebrow but opens a drawer to get somethin', I guess for me to go to the room with. I ain't never been in a hotel either. I try not to touch anything 'cuz my backwoods clumsiness might break it, I think. Not that I'm that clumsy. In the last fifty years I only broke my arm once 'cuz I needed to fix the roof and didn't have my ladder, it havin' been destroyed in the storm that messed up my roof. Plus, it was slippery up there so of course I fell.

My coonhound Skipper don't judge me, so I didn't do nothin' wrong.

"Alright, and where are you from, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Err... Southern states, I guess. I ain't a foreigner, for sure." She sets a flat card on the desk in front of me, sayin',

"That sounds nice. Here's your room key. The number is there on it. Enjoy your stay, sir!"

With that, I'm left to find my way to room 10-69. I ask a bellboy right off and he says the first number means it's on the tenth story. Also he takes my battered suitcase from me, sayin' it'll be up there when I do find my way to the room. I thank him and look at the elevator, pressin' the shiny button.

The doors slide open soon after. When I get on, a little girl runs in after me and gets up on her tiptoes to pound on one of the buttons a few times. She's got wet brown hair down to her chin, green eyes and a saddle of freckles across her face. She's wearin' a light blue one-piece swimmin' suit and has a fluffy white towel wrapped around her shoulders. After the elevator starts movin', she looks up at me with her big innocent eyes.

"Oh, hello! What floor are you goin' to, Mister?"

I see she's pushed the "10" button since that's the only one that's lit up, so I tell her, "It's fine, I'm goin' where you are."

"Are you a country, come to meet with everyone too?"

This child is one of the nations? Strange. I tell her, "Yes, I am. Are you one?"

"Nope! My daddy is, though! What country are you?" I consider tryin' to explain to this yankee child what the confederacy is, but then decided against it and just shrug.

"Southern US states. Guess we're so different they have to have another nation for it."

"My daddy says the south is full of deserts and racists!" Sigh. This kid don't know nothin'. Clearly she ain't never left this area in her life. I try to not take offense as she don't look any older than seven and probably don't mean anything by it. Little kids parrot what their parents say, I've noticed.

"Say, kid, what's your name anyway? And how old are you? And why'd you run onto the elevator all drippin' wet like that?"

"I'm Elise DeBoer, I turned six last month, and after we went swimming and were gonna come back to the rooms, I told my best friend Toni that I could get up here in the elevator faster than he can on the stairs, so I had to run 'cuz he started up the steps, and it's not fair 'cuz he's bigger than I am!"

"Uh-huh... And is your friend a nation?"

"Yep! He's the country of Spain, and 'cuz he's a grown-up, sometimes he's real busy, but lots of times he comes over to our apartment to watch me while Daddy's at the markets!"

"Oh? How old is he, if he's grown already?" I ask, thinkin' somethin' like sixteen or seventeen.

"He's 25, which is old enough to drive, smoke and drink!" Elise grins up at me, showin' her missin' top front teeth. She seems a little too cheerful about the fact her best friend is a grown man, I think. I'm about to ask her more, but then the elevator stops and the doors open and she rushes out, leavin' wet footprints in the hall's thick gray carpet. I come out and look around the hallway. A sign reads "59-70" with an arrow pointin' down a hall. I go to almost the end and slide the keycard in it's mechanism. The light turns a bright green and it buzzes in a kind of satisfyin' way. I have always been good at getting technology right on the first try. I open the door and go in.

It's real pretty, with a nice veiw of the city, and a perfectly made bed sittin' there. There's a big TV, too, and a guide sittin' under the remote on the nightstand. I sit on the bed and look around. My suitcase is against the wall, and I hear Elise's voice coupled with a man's. I guess she found Toni and they're arguin' over who won the race. It's dark, and the city is still lit up with it's skyscrapers and billboards. Back home, you could see all the stars and everything, but the city is real pretty too, in a different sorta way.

I pick up the phone on the nightstand and call Alfred's number. He picks up after two rings and asks,

"What's up?"

"I'm here. I swear that little girl Elise is hidin' somethin' though. No kid is just friends with a grown man like that. It's strange. And the plane was terrifyin' and it's cold and the taxicab driver was a filthy Mexican, and-"

"Hey, hey, hey, calm down. So you ran into Elise and Antonio, huh?" I knew Toni wasn't his real name. "He took her swimming an hour and a half ago and Joel- her dad was worrying, so that's good. There's a dinner event in the ballroom-" Crap, a ballroom? I ain't got no ball clothes! "ah, no, I can hear you panicking, but don't worry if you don't have a suit. This is the UN! Half of us have seen each other naked before, so," I didn't need to know that. Gross. "so, casual clothes are fine! Seeya at seven!" And then he hangs up.

Well, I guess I'm gonna meet the other nations tonight. For now, I'm gonna explore a bit. This hotel seems real fancy, so I'm gonna see what I can. I got two hours.


	19. Chapter 19

I go to the ballroom, which I learned is just what they call the place to make it sound fancy, and I see lots of other people talkin' among each other. I recognize Alfred in a T-shirt and jeans. I'm just wearin' my favorite red plaid shirt and pants with my boots and since I don't happen to have a decent-lookin' belt, suspenders. I think I look every bit a ma-ture adult. Alfred spots me right away and drags over a boy in a red sweatshirt with a leaf in white on the front.

"See, Mattie, this is my south half!" It seems Alfred, along with this Mattie, both have a need to wear glasses, same as me. "Jason, this is my totally adorable twin brother, Mattie!"

"Um, actually it's Matthew." He smiles really shyly at me. "And I'm the country of Canada."

I nod. "Pleasure to meet you."

Alfred drags me and his poor brother over to where two men are sort of arguing. One of them, I notice, is the blondie from the war.

"Iggy, France!" Alfred calls out to them. They both turn. I know I recognize the green-eyed one, but the other seems real familiar, in the way of something I've forgotten. Maybe I knew him before Big Farm and forgot, like I did everything else before then. On the other hand, if he's a nation and I was brought up thinkin' I was normal human, it ain't likely. Come to think of it, why'd my mind instantly go to that, anyway?

"What do you want, Alfred?" The irritated green-eyed man asks of him. Then he notices me. "So you did manage to get the Southerner up here, eh?"

"Yup!" And that's all I hear of that conversation as I see her. Standin' with another girl and a real tall threatenin' lookin' guy, is a woman. She's tall and slim and got long, straight silvery-blond hair with a dark blue bow on the top of her head to go with her white blouse and deep blue skirt. She turns to look as the tall man catches me starin' and points, and she's got these blue-green eyes and wow, she's pretty.

I pull at Alfred's sleeve and he turns from the conversation to look at me. "What?"

"Who's that girl over there in the blue bow?" His eyes widen.

"Why?"

"She's real pretty..."

"Dude, that's Natasha! She's Belarusian, which is basically Russian!" He shakes his head, "You don't want to try after her!"

"Oh I think I do... I really think I do."

"No, you don't. Besides, she wants to marry her own brother!"

"Maybe I can change that." As I'm thinkin' of how exactly I'd do that, another man walks up to us. He's real pale, almost deathly pale, and despite lookin' as young as the rest of the nations, he's got white hair that sticks up all over the place. He's wearin' a shirt that advertises Heineken beer that somehow goes with his torn blue jeans. He puts his arm around Alfred's shoulders and says in a loud, harsh accent,

"Hey Alfie! Who's the cute little human kid you brought in? Your new date?" I feel my face heatin' up and cover it since I'm probably goin' red. Alfred looks kinda disturbed too.

"No way, Gil! He's my south half, and a nation just like us!" This white-haired creature takes Alfred's hand and puts it on the middle of my chest, confusin' the Hell outta both of us until he announces,

"No, _now_ he's your southern half!"

I get what he's implyin' right away and start blushin' again. Alfred thinks on it for a bit, then realizes, and his face also goes bright red.

"Oh my _GOD_, Gilbert! Look, you're embarrassing him!"

Gilbert looks to me, and I start back as I realize his eyes are a ruby red. Good Lord, he must be some kind of demon. He puts his hand on my shoulder and grins in a twisted way. I see his teeth are slightly pointed. Yep, he's a demon all right. He speaks and his voice, not as loud as before, is kind of rough and scratchy, with that accent that I just can't place.

"Alright, fine. I'm sorry that I freaked you out, okay? I'm Gilbert, AKA the most awesomest nation of Prussia! Who are you?"

"Err..." His breath smells of alcohol and his clothes stink like cigarette smoke. "I'm Jason... But lots of folks call me J.G... I'm Alfred's southern states, I guess..."

"I can tell you're like me. A poor little nation who's lost his land, _ja?_ What are you really?"

"Umm..." I wish he'd back up. I don't even know a very good insult to make him leave me be, and it ain't polite to just shove him which is what I wanna do. I wonder if it's bad to have all my insults I know dependin' on where someone's from. Ah, well. Can't change the way I was brought up. "I was the Confederate States of America for a while, but now I'm just the South."

"Huh. Most people consider me to be the eastern part of Germany!"

"Goddamn kraut..." I muttered as he leaned in closer. It didn't stop him any.

"You're a cute little _Amerikaner_, you know... Soundin' different than Alfie. Are you single?"

I jump away at that, manners be damned. "Single, but _not_ interested in you!" God, does he have any sense of decency? Obviously not as he grabs me around the waist and pulls me in.

"Aww, why not? It's that you don't like foreigners, _ja?_" I shove him away again.

"It's that I'm not... That way!"

"Aww, don't be silly, _kleiner Amerikaner_. All nations are programmed to not care about those things!"

"Well I wasn't raised the same as ya'll, so I guess that makes me different, and right and natural, so be it."

Then the pretty girl comes over, followed by the tall man she was talkin' to before. Gilbert, upon seeing them freezes and goes pale, which I hadn't though was possible with his skin tone. The girl smiles at me in the way of someone who's bein' polite and don't usually smile.

"Is he giving you trouble, _амерыканскі_?"

"Err... A little bit?" I can tell I'm blushin' just talkin' to her. She looks to her tall companion and tells him something in a language I don't know. He smiles, which is terrifyin' to see and grabs Gilbert, sayin',

"You shouldn't harrass other nations, _Kalingrad_... Perhaps I need to teach you lesson, _да_?"

Gilbert looks like he's gonna pass out or somethin' from the fear and just whimpers, "_Nein_, you don't, I'll be good!" Which makes the bigger guy let him go. He looks at me and then sorta jogs off across the room. I look to the girl.

"Thanks fer savin' me, I guess..." She smiles a little bit again.

"It was nothing. Gilbert knows he shouldn't mess around with nation like you who are easily offended and messed with."

"I ain't _that_ easy to offend..." I say. Then she looks me over, and says,

"I haven't seen you before. I'm Natasha Arlovskaya-Braginski, or the Republic of Belarus. Who are you?" I straighten up and adjust my glasses and say,

"I'm Jason G. Jones, or just J.G. I'm the Southern U-nited States and former Confederacy of those states," I ain't never flirted before but I think this is how, "and you are a very pretty woman."

She does that little polite smirk again. "Yes, I hear this a lot. I do think that Gilbert is right in calling you a cute Am-err-i-ken, though. I almost never agree with Gilbert, but this time he has good tastes."

"Aw, shucks..." Is all I can say, sorta scuffin' my foot on the floor. I really do think I like her, Russian or not.

"Anyway, I must go make sure my big brother Ivan doesn't get into trouble. It was nice talking to you J.G." She says and walks off in a real graceful way. Soon, Gilbert returns, holdin' two cups.

"Sorry for the way I acted before. Want some punch? It's pretty good." Half 'o me doesn't wanna trust anything he gives me, but I must be the Southern gentleman Schoolmister tried to make me be, so I ask for a sip of it first. He gives me one cup, sayin' it's his and why would he drug his own cup, which makes me think he's had problems with that before. The punch tastes fruity and creamy.

My cup, which I'm handed after agreeing that it was indeed pretty good, tastes off. He put vodka into it. Cheap vodka at that. He must think that bein' underage I don't have any sorta tolerance or idea of what somethin' that's been spiked tastes like, so he's tryin' to get me drunk. Even if I hadn't noticed, a lil' bit of vodka ain't enough to get me drunk. Back during prohibition, I learned how to set up stills and made my own liquors which are stronger than any vodka for sure. I built up a tolerance and so Gilbert and his one vodka-spiked cup of punch ain't gonna do a thing.

I still act like I'm feelin' a little funny and when he goes and gets me another (spiked) cup I thank him and swallow it down. Then he asks if I need help gettin' back to my room. I act like I'm totally out of it and nod as he starts leadin' me away.

"You know I like you, right?" He smirks as we walk down the hall.

"Yeah, but I don't go in that way, so yer gonna have'ta find someone else, Gil!" I say. I find people assume I'm drunk when I get loud and put my accent on thick, so that's what I'm doin' now. "Hey, this ain't the right hallway."

"_Ja_, you're right. I figured I'd take you to my room since it's closer and you don't look so good."

"Wowie, Gil, yer really a real good frey-und fer that, lookin' out fer my well-bein' 'n all!" I really sound stupid when I do this but that's alright. Let him think I'm blackout drunk like he wants me to be. Then he pushes me against the door. "H-hey... what're y' doin'?" He gets really close to my face. All of me wants to push him away but I keep actin' all drunkenly startled at him.

"I said I really like you, J.G. You're my cute _kleiner Amerikaner_..." And he actually kisses me. Acting time is over and I shove him away, pull my pistol on him, and wipe my mouth off.

"You spiked my punch so you could get me back for-for-_that_, you pervert!" I shout at him. He put his hands up right away as I pulled the gun. Smart man.

"I'm guessing it takes more than four shots of vodka to knock you out, then?" He says, smirking. I have had enough of this. I probably wouldn't be able to get back to the ballroom, so I glare murder at him.

"Yes. That and I ain't actually stupid enough to go anywhere alone with someone like you. Now yer gonna take me back to the ballroom or yer gonna get shot." Surprisingly, he shrugs and points down the hallway.

"This way." He starts walking and I follow and soon we're back at the party as if nothin' happened.

I sit at one of the tables alone in the corner and think about how much I dislike Gilbert. Right beside me and very suddenly I hear someone cheerfully ask,

"Is anyone else sitting here?"

I resist the urge to pull a weapon on him and instead turn and then let out a yelp. He's right in my face, and he's got hair that looks a lot like war blondie except a real pale color and his eyes are two colors. Plastic sky blue and girl-birthday-party-icing pink. His clothes are real bright too.

"Er, no, as far as I can tell." I say. He pulls up the chair across from me and sits down. He's got freckles sorta like Elise DeBoer, in a saddle across his pale face.

"I don't think I've met you before!" He says, seemin' real excited, "My name's Oliver, and I'm the 2-P of Arthur over there!" He points at blondie. So that's his name. Arthur.

"What's a 2-P?" I ask all stupidly.

"It's a darker part of a nation- their opposite with a darker twist! Or lighter depending on how the 1-P is! Anyway, you haven't told me your name yet!"

"Of course. How very rude of me. I'm J.G Jones and the Southern United States."

"Oooh! Another Alfie to play with!" Oliver says, seeming overly happy about that. "You know, I think you might like my Alfie! He's a bit of a troublemaker, but usually he's such a good, sweet boy!"

"Uh-huh." I say, noticin' the way Oliver's sittin'. People sit differently when they're carryin' a knife in their belt, I know. Oliver's sittin' exactly like that now. "You got a permit fer that knife you got? Yankees don't much appreciate un-permitted weapons, I hear." He looks a little startled, but then an eerie smile crosses his face.

"Ah, yes... My knife. How did a sweet little thing like you know I had it, huh?" I try to scoot back and find my chair already against the wall. Shoot.

"Well, I, uh... I know these kinds of things... A person sits a certain way with a knife so they don't stab themself and, uh..." He's leanin' across the table towards me, still grinnin' like a creepy clown or somethin'.

"Tell me, J.G Jones, what do you usually eat for your supper? I like sheppard's pie and roasts the best. Homemade, of course."

"Umm, I like barbecued ribs a lot... and uh," He's makin' me real nervous. I can sense he ain't really happy. Maybe it's because I pointed out the knife. "Uh, I had some crawdad and butter that was pretty good the other day... and, uh... I guess iced tea is also pretty good..." I'm just talkin' out of my mind to make him go away. He don't, and smiles even wider at me.

"I bet you'd taste kind of gamey and maybe a little like barbecue sauce if you got cooked up!"

"Err, thanks, I guess?" What a strange thing to tell someone.

"What kind of desserts? I like cupcakes best. Red velvet's my favorite. I make my own, too! You should try it sometime."

"Umm, ah like pecan pie and cobblers, and uh, key lime, and, ah guess cupcakes are pretty good. Red velvet too." I can't help but wince at the accent I've got.

"Hmm." And then Oliver's back to normal, smilin' at me like nothin' happened because a kid is standin' right by him. "Oh, hello, Alfie! What do you want?" The kid frowns at Oliver with dark red eyes and says,

"I want you to quit harrassing new nations with your creepiness! Cut it out, or I'll tell Christophe!"

Oliver looks a little disappointed but smiles back at me, waves goodbye, and then actually disappears into nothing. I must've looked pretty shocked 'cuz the boy sits where Oliver just was and sorta smiles.

"Yeah, he does that sometimes. It's pretty freaky. Anyway, hi, I'm Alphonse, but you can call me Al. I'm Ollie's kid and the 2-P of Alfred over there, and I like to think I'm probably some part of the USA." I nod at him. Despite Oliver's pale skin Al's is kinda dark, like mulatto dark, and he's got dark reddish-brown hair despite his daddy's pale blond mess. He also wears red-tinted glasses on his face, a white shirt that's probably actually a wifebeater under his dark-colored bomber jacket, and tight, ripped jeans. His jacket has a couple of patches on it, I also notice. Bet he's one of them punk-rocker kids.

"I'm Jason Jones, usually called J.G, and I'm the Southern States and former Confederacy."

"Sheesh, I, the super-vegan-liberal-anarchist am interacting with a former confederate? Wow. Strange world."

"Anarchist?" I ask.

"It means I'm not gonna let the government boss me around, dumbass." He says back.

"You don't gotta be rude just 'cuz yer some liberal hippie-kid." I tell him.

"Where'd you get 'hippie-kid' from?"

"You said yer vegan and a yankee."

"Fair enough." He waves another kid over. This guy's got a wider, sturdier frame than Al's kinda scrawny appearance. He's got blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and dark glasses that cover his eyes. He's wearin' a Canadian Mountie jacket, all red with gold buttons. I don't wanna mess with him.

"Hey Jamie, this is the new kid we saw Ollie talkin' to. His name's J.G. He's Southern." Jamie says nothin'. I sorta nod at him and he nods back.

"He ain't one to talk much, is he?" I remark.

"Wow, he really is Southern isn't he?" Jamie says. Al nods, smiling widly. I can see he has a gap in his front teeth where one is missin'. From his appearance, and the way he's acted so far, I bet he got in a fight and lost it.

"What happened to yer teeth, Al? You got one missin'." I say.

"Lost a fight with James here over a game of street hockey." He says. "The guy might not look it, but he's really quick on rollerblades and real skilled with a hockey stick."

"Oh." I say, deciding to not ever challenge James to a game of street hockey. "So you two are Oliver's kids? I guess yer twins like Alfred and... umm..." I can't for the life of me remember the other one's name. "His brother?"

"Well, not exactly." Al says, leanin' back in his chair and puttin' his feet up on the table. He's wearin' raggy-lookin' tennis shoes. I decided to question his lineage at a later time. I bet he wouldn't tell me, anyway.

"Oliver says yer a good boy mostly, but a troublemaker too."

"Ollie says a lot of things. I don't think I was ever a 'good boy,' not that he ever noticed."

"You were. Back before the 'accident,' and before me and Christophe came to live with you guys, back when you were Ollie's little pet!" James says, smirkin'.

"Accident?" I ask. Both of 'em wave it off as nothin' and I leave it at that. "So... Al... What exactly _do_ you eat?" I try to make conversation.

"I gotta take protein pills if that's what you mean." He says. "They taste nasty!" To emphasize this, he sticks his tongue out. He's got somethin' in the middle of it. I ask about it and he snorts and looks at his brother, sayin' "Wow, how redneck do you gotta be to not know what a tongue stud looks like?"

"I ain't redneck. Mostly. I'm more a Southern Gentleman type, I think." I tell him, sittin' up straighter.

"Whatever," Al says, rollin' his eyes. He's got a metal ring through his eyebrow I didn't see before too. What's with him and jabbin' metal into his body, I wonder?

"How many of those things do you got, boy?" I ask him, indicating the ring.

"What, how many piercings?" I nod. He smirks again.

"Well, there's these ones, on each side," he pulls back his reddish-brown hair to show the row of studs in his ear, "the one in my tongue, the one in my eyebrow..." He smirks harder, if that's even possible, "I've got both nipples done," Gross, "Thinkin' of getting my bellybutton done, and... heh, I've got one in a real private place. Someone like you might explode if I just say it." Well I now know far too much about Alphonse Jones. I get up and leave them without another word.

Actually I think with hearin' of a six-year-old and her probably-pedo adult male friend, almost bein' drugged and date-raped by an albino kraut, comin' even closer to bein' stabbed by a limey technicolor psychopath and meetin' liberal-hippie-kid-jabbin'-holes-in-himself Al, I'm done with the nations for tonight. So I head back up to my room to sleep for the meeting tomorrow at 8, a paper message left in my room on the bed tells me.

_It's been a strange day,_ I think as I set my glasses on the nightstand and turn out the light. I lay back and I dream of South Carolina and Big Farm, waitin' for me and pretty, pretty, Natasha to come back to.


	20. Chapter 20

_"...You need to make sure he won't get you... Run, as far as you can, and when you can't run anymore, you need to hide... I have no control here, I can't save you..." The Frenchman looks at me sadly with his blue eyes. "I promised your mother I'd care for you, so you must run to be safe..." He tells me. The word 'mother' brings up a picture of a woman with smooth dust-colored skin, midnight black hair and bright forest eyes, smilin' down at me in a sad way, "You know you're kind of young to be a nation to yourself, but you did win the right..." And then I'm back starin' at the Frenchman and he tells me to run and run 'til I can't run no more, and I do, and my clothes are catchin' on the trees and gettin' torn up and then my breathin's hard in my chest like I'm breathin' razorblades..._

_-Beep-_

_-Beep-_

_-Beep-_

The alarm clock wakes me up. I take a moment to remember that I ain't at home, and instead at a hotel with all the others of the strange, strange kind I am a part of. I sigh, sort of, and slam my hand down on the clock. It says in happy red numbering, "6:01 AM." I've always been good at wakin' up early. When I've got work, I have to get up early to go to it. When I was a kid, in the rebel army, we got switched if we weren't up right when we were called. At Big Farm, before I left, we were beaten with clubs and whips if we weren't up. So, I'm good at wakin' up.

I hear a kid whinin' in the hallway and figure Elise DeBoer's daddy must've got her up early too. I go over to the small sink area of the hotel room and look in the mirror. My hair's stickin' all over the place, but especially one part stickin' up that makes me sorta look like Alfred is what I notice. I cross my eyes and stick out my tongue, and then think to myself that now I really look like Alfred and then I have to put my hand over my mouth to keep from laughin' too loud.

I run my fingers through my hair and then decide it might be worth it to shower, thinkin' of how my shower back home wasn't really the best thing as far as actually gettin' clean. I make enough money to get by, but I still probably fall under the category of "Poor White Southerner" as I always have. So I try the hotel shower. It's nice, feelin' the water actually havin' pressure, not changin' temperature randomly on me, and havin' it be more than just "mostly" clear. The shampoo is in a little version of a normal-size bottle, which I find to be pretty funny as I pretend I'm a giant tryin' to get along in a normal world with it. I always thought I looked more than actually acted like an adult.

I get the bottle open and smell the stuff. It smells kinda minty. I scrub it into my hair and a bit of suds gets into my eye. Hmm, I guess I'm okay, I think as it don't sting right away. Then my eye starts to burnin' and feelin' cool and minty at the same time and anyone passin' by would'a heard me goin' "YE-_OW_!" as it hit real bad.

That experience accomplished, my minty eye and me leave the shower and I wrap myself in a fluffy towel. There's more'n one there, so I don't see the harm in usin' one fer dryin' my body and the other fer my hair. After puttin' the towel over my head and rufflin' it around for a bit, I look in the mirror again. My hair's stickin' out all over the place in a damp blond mess. I get my comb and make it go to it's normal style of parted to the side with the one bit right down the bridge of my nose. There's somethin' special about that bit of hair I've had since I was a kid. When I tried to cut it off, it went off, but somehow actually hurt me, real bad, til it grew right back.

I ain't tried to cut it again, and I don't plan to.

I go through the drawers I unloaded my suitcase into and come up with kinda ragged blue boxer shorts, a dark red shirt and a clip-on tie. This, along with my suspenders, brown dress shoes and black slacks are what I'll wear for the day. The hotel serves breakfast, especially to visitin' foreigners in a room I just hear called the buffet room. I find myself sharin' the elevator with Elise DeBoer once more, along with a tall, serious-lookin' blond man who based on Elise's chatterin' I know is her daddy. Elise looks at me as I get on and grins again.

"Hiya South-Mister!" She chirps, and then pulls on her daddy's coat, sayin', "Daddy, lookit! That's the guy I told you about that came in yesterday! Loooook, Daddyyyyy!" She whines to him, and when he still don't react beyond a sigh, she stops, pouts and says, "Toni would look."

As the thing that Elise wants her daddy to look at, I just sigh loudly and look to Mr. DeBoer with my best face that says _"control yer damn kid please."_ He looks at me with piercing green eyes, the same color as Elise's and then speaks with only a hint of some accent,

"I'm sorry about Elise. She gets excited."

"S'alright. She's just a little kid, after all." I say, but I'm thinkin' Mr. DeBoer here should teach his kid to be quieter in public. I wasn't like that when I was six, 'cuz I knew I'd get beaten if I even tried to whine. "So... Elise informed me yesterday that yer a nation? Which one? And o do ya got a name?" I say, tryin' to start a conversation to get rid of the cold aura in here.

"Joel DeBoer. The Netherlands. In Europe. You?" He ain't a man of many words, it seems.

"Jason Jones, 'r just J.G., Southern States, former Confederacy." I say, copyin' his flat tone.

"Hm." Is all Joel DeBoer has to say fer the rest of the ride. Elise is quiet, too.

When the elevator opens, though, Elise takes off across the room, and soon comes back leadin' a smilin' man with sorta curly dark hair and tanned skin.

"Look, Toni, look! This is the new nation. He needs friends, 'cuz he's new, and you're nice to everyone, so you should be his friend!" Elise says to her friend. He smiles at her fondly, says, "Alright, alright, I'll talk to him!" and looks at me.

"So yer her best friend, then?" I say.

"_Si_, I am." He agrees, still smilin'. I guess he's a happy kind of guy, probably one that I'd think nothin' bad of. Maybe he is just fond of lil' Elise and nothin' more. Lil' kids'll say anyone who's nice to 'em over a period of time is their best friend, after all.

"I find it a bit strange that a grown man hangs around a six-year-old girl, and that her father's alright with it." I say back.

"Well... Joel isn't really alright with me at all, but Elise likes me, and I'm really good with kids, so he lets me babysit her, and I let her go to Happy Tomato for free!"

"Happy Tomato?" I ask.

"It's my home daycare center that I run with my Lovi! We take kids from two months to eleven years old! There's about thirty of them, and they're all very cute!"

"Uh-huh." I say, lookin' at him funny. Dunno why anyone would want to spend time in the company of thirty children, but I suppose there are some who do. I do like kids fine, but thirty of 'em is too many. I'm about to politely excuse myself to go get some food, when a guy with an angry face and brown hair comes stalkin' up to where we are, and starts yellin,

"Antonio, you bastard! Why'd you just take off like that?!" Antonio starts to say something, but he's interrupted, "Don't talk over me, _idiota_! You were supposed to wait for me at the goddamn table so we could have a place to sit!"

Antonio seems unbothered by this and shrugs. "Elise wanted me to come say hi to the new guy, Lovi... I was gonna be right back!"

"Oh so listening to your next little target is more important than your own damn boyfriend?! _Bastardo! È fottuto arrapato!_" As this fight goes on, I start to sorta back up, and think of grabbin' Elise's arm to pull her away with me 'cuz she shouldn't be exposed to that language, and for that matter trusted in the hands of someone in a dys-functional, homo-sexual relationship, but then I back into Alfred instead.

He turns around with his mouth full and smiles widely at me. He swallows and then says,

"Hey, J.G.! Havin' fun with the others so far?"

"Depends on yer idea of fun. I've almost been molested, stabbed, and run into too many other sinful things to count. Y'all are crazy, and I'm gonna go home right after the meeting." I say, crossin' my arms to show him I'm serious. He looks a little saddened at that.

"Aww... I'm sorry they're so intense for you... It just means that they kinda accept you're one of us. And... Well I saw you talking to Gilbert last night, and he's kinda... that way sometimes, and well, just don't talk to Oliver if you don't wanna get hurt, and Antonio and Lovino always fight, like France and England... So... Give it 'til the end of the week, when the rest of us go home?" He gives me a hopeful smile. God, he looks like a sad, hungry puppy with blue eyes, lookin' to me for a treat.

"Alright, quit the puppy-dog eyes. I'll stay another couple'a days. But only 'cuz yer payin' for the hotel room." His eyes light up and he grins.

"Awesome, dude! If you don't wanna call a cab, we can ride with France to the UN meeting hall! It's usually just me, England, him, and Mattie, so we can put you in the middle!"

"I'd be glad to share the ride with you, sir." I say, out of habit of bein' proper. Alfred, not used to such formality, snorts at me, still smilin',

"Dude, nobody here calls anyone 'sir,' 'kay? It makes you stick out like a sore thumb!"

"It's the way I was raised." I tell him, standin' up straighter, "I was brought up to be a gentleman and as such I will be."

"I thought you were brought up to try to kill me." Alfred says, still really amused at me. He's one of them real happy people, I think.

"Don't get me wrong, I kin still kick yer ass, boy. But I'll be polite in doin' it." I tell him.

"Pfft, whatever. Come on, let's get something to eat! We gotta leave in like fifteen minutes." Alfred says, grabbin' my arm and draggin' me towards the table. I'm about to mention he was eatin' when I found him, but he yanks me over to the table anyway. He's real strong in his grip and pull, and so I gotta follow along.

Soon, we're piled into France's sleek, creamy-white car and we're headin' down the road to my first-ever UN conference.


	21. Chapter 21

We're all told to sit by the nations we're closest in the big conference room with it's huge round table. I sit between Alfred and Al, as Alfred motions me to. Arthur stops a second to look at the three of us.

"Goodness, you three look nearly exactly alike. It's rather strange, seeing you sitting like that."

I don't think I look anything like Al. Fer one, I'm white and I don't think he is. Fer two, he's got dark hair and red eyes, and I'm blond and blue eyed. Fer three, I ain't got holes and metal in my body anywhere. Although now that I'm close to him, I can see Al's got freckles just like Oliver, only made kinda faint by his dark skin. I guess we got that in common, havin' freckles.

Alfred and me look a bit more alike, which back when I glimpsed him as a kid struck me as odd. He's got the same hair color, and almost style as me, but his eyes are darker blue. He's also a bit taller than me. Al and me are about the same height, but he's skinnier. Probably from bein' a vegan and so not gettin' nothin' to eat ever.

Al smirks and puts his feet up on the table as he seems to like doin'. Alfred grins and laughs a little at Arthur's comment. I look at him over the rims of my glasses in a sorta "are you kiddin' me" look.

"Well, it's true. I'm not saying you three are actually anything alike, simply that you look it." Arthur says. Oliver appears behind him and grabs him into a hug. I can see how uncomfortable this is makin' him, but Oliver just says in his annoyin'ly cheerful voice,

"I think it's real cute how all three of them look alike! I bet they'd look nice all dressed the same, too!"

"Aww, come on, Ollie, we don't wanna do that!" Al finally complains to which Oliver starts talking about how much cuter and more obedient he was as a kid.

I pass the rest of the time starin' at Natasha and tryin' not to get caught. She does catch me at it, and I hope she don't come over to talk to me about it. Luckily she just smiles in her "I-know-you-like-me-silly-'Merican-boy" way. I look down at my notepage as the current speaker goes on and on. I start drawin' a circle on it, over and over. I'm pretty bored until Alfred stands up next to me and goes to the front.

"I recently got word from the FBI," he starts, "and the attacks were perpetrated by an Islamic extremist group from Iraq. My president has decided that this is plenty cause to go to war with Iraq and Afghanistan." He looks straight at this girl who can't be more'n sixteen, and who's wearin' a dark red headscarf with only a tuft of her black hair showin' in the front. She jumps up and says in her thick Middle-East accent,

"Glad you get what's coming to you, American swine! I will happily die to see you reap the consequences of your presence in my brother and sister's lands, and your helping Israel to attack us!"

I sorta try and be invisible 'cuz an angry woman ain't to be trifled with. A guy who looks about the same age as me, probably Afghanistan, pushes the girl down roughly and demands to know what Alfred's problem is, attackin' entire nations fer the actions of a few people. Soon ever'one is sidin' with or against Alfred, with most of us with him.

"Alright, ALRIGHT!" Shouts the German one, who I think must be the one who takes charge, "Alfred, sit down!" He does. "Isra! Miraj! _Shut up!_" They do and sink back to their seats, glarin' murder at us three Americans. Before the kraut can say another word, Iraq spits in our direction and says somethin' that sounds like _"mo-kaseetzen ndelkafara!"_

It must've been some insult 'cuz the others around her laugh and say things that sound like agreement. I really don't like it when the other nations talk their languages. I don't understand why they can't just learn English if they're gonna come here. I tell Alfred this and he shrugs and only says,

"Why should we expect countries that hate us now to speak our language?"

Well I don't like 'em neither, damn terrorists.

* * *

><p>After the meeting, we drive back to the hotel and Alfred asks me if I wanna go to the pool with him. I say alright and Al asks if he can come along, and so we all head back to our rooms to get into our swimmin' clothes.<p>

I wear some ratty camo-shorts I've had fer years. Alfred's got red-white-n'-blue trunks and Al's are just black with red trim on 'em. We're all wearin' T-shirts down to the place, and Alfred's got goggles held in one hand. When we get there, I see we ain't the only ones who wanted to go in the pool after the meeting. France and Arthur are there, and so is Gilbert, Antonio and Elise. And Natasha. She's there too. She's wearin' a dark blue one-piece, which really outlines her figure. I do my best not to stare.

Gilbert's back is pale, of course, but also horribly scarred in the way of someone who's been whipped over and over 'gain without the wounds bein' let to heal first. I try not to stare at that neither.

Al pulls off his shirt first, and I'm not really shocked to see he's tattooed all over his back. Alfred follows and I see he's wearin' dogtags. I do it to, and right away Al asks me,

"Woah, J.G., what happened to your back to scar you like that?"

I've got a bunch of thin, pinkish lines all across and up-and-down my back from when I was a kid at school and got whipped. It was so bad that the scars are still there a hundred years later. I don't tell them about Row and the awful, sinful things we did, and how Schoolmister saved me from Devil possession by beatin' it outta me. I don't even tell 'em when I happened to get it, I just say,

"Got whipped once. Hurt kinda bad. 'M okay now though."

"Ah. Growin' up in the South must've been rough on you, huh?" He says, thinkin' I bet, of the stereotypes of strict Southern families.

"Yeah. Somethin' like that." I say back.

And so, we all swim, then go get room-service supper, and from there to bed. Tomorrow, Alfred says, we're gonna go see the sights of New York, as it's custom fer whatever nation hosts a conference to show the others around.

Tomorrow, I'm gonna get up the nerve to talk to Natasha Arlovskaya-Braginski.


	22. Chapter 22

Up again and dressed again, this time in a white shirt and jeans. I make sure and comb my hair to the point where it's soft and kinda fluffy, shinin' all nice and golden-y in the light. I bare my teeth in the mirror and wonder whether or not I look buck-toothed. My front teeth are a little bit spaced apart and a little bit forward, but if people ain't lookin' they don't notice it. I wash my face and inspect it close in the mirror fer anything disgustin' and findin' nothin' but face and freckles, I go into the elevator and to the buffet room. I'm gonna talk to a girl.

She's sittin' at the table with the other two, her older brother and sister, Alfred says. I get my scrambled eggs and waffles, and go to the table.

"G'mornin'" I greet all of 'em as they look up. "D'ya'll mind if I sit here?" I say, makin' myself smile in what I hope is a friendly way. The big guy is eyein' me kinda suspiciously, and I give him the look right back, 'cuz don't I got even less reason to trust a drunk-ass commie than he's got to me?

"I suppose you may sit if you wish." Natasha says, scootin' to make room fer me next to her.

Aw, crap... I think, awkwardly settin' my plate down. I didn't really account fer sittin' right by her, and I really hope I don't look too tense, but then I realize, she's just a girl. A real, real, pretty girl, but just a girl. They ain't that good at readin' our minds, right? Surely she can't tell I'm nervous.

"So, J.G.," Natasha starts, in that pretty accent of hers, "How are you liking New York so far?"

"Its... nice. Colder'n home by a long shot, though." I say, playin' with my food. Just gotta wait fer her brother 'n sister to leave 'n us to be alone...

"I find I enjoy the climate, but Am-err-i-kens are so annoyink, I think. So loud and obnoxious."

Bein' the person-cation of the loudest of all'o the Americans I can only nod along. "We might get loud down South, but we're sure nice to visitors." I say. We Southerners to try to be hos-bit-able folk, but it's sure hard when yankees keep tryin' to piss us off with their crazy laws and things.

"So I've heard." Natasha says. Her sister looks up suddenly at someone callin' her name, _"Katushya, come here!"_ She's got kinda... well, I don't wanna admit I was starin', but when someone's runnin' off with their boobs jigglin' like that, they're askin' to get stared at, and maybe worse. Katushya had best be careful around that pervert Gilbert, I reckon.

Now it's just Big Brother Commie left, and then me and Natasha'll be alone. I try to make conversation to him.

"So... I hear it gets cold where y'all're from."

"_да_, it gets very cold."

"It snow a lot?"

"_да_."

"I ain't seen more'n a few inches of snow a'fore. Cain't even imagine havin' it every year. Must be hard."

"You get used to it, and sometimes learn to like the bitter cold that seep through every crack in house and every tear in jacket until you are the cold itself."

I can't think of anything to say back to that, so I sorta nod. Then Creepy-Ass Commie leaves with a warnin' to his little sister in their language, which she seems to take to heart, and we're alone.

"Yer family's a strange one," I say to her, sorta smilin', "but whose family ain't a lil' bit strange?"

"You called me pretty before." I start back a little. She really gets right to the point, this girl. I like it.

"Yeah, and?"

"You are going to use some silly Am-err-i-ken pick-up line on me and end asking me to a date."

"Wayyy-l... If ya wanna hear a bad pickup line I kin give you one." I say, smirkin' a bit. She raises her eyebrows.

"Fire it away."

"If you'll be mine, I promise I won't never secede from _that_ union!" I say. It was the first thing that came to my mind, honest. She stares at me fer a second, and then laughs. It's a pretty sound, like a nice clear stream on a summer day.

"Alright, you win. That _was_ very bad!"

"So... kin I ask you on a date now?" I say, leanin' on the table, makin' myself try to look as attractive as possible.

"I'm only loyal to my big brother Ivan..." She starts, but I, thinkin' real fast, say,

"Well why not try me first? Maybe it'll make Ivan jealous enough to want you. Or maybe you'll be happy with me. Ya never know 'til ya try, after all!"

She appears to think it over fer a few minutes before replyin' to me, with that little smile on her face,

"_да,_ you're right... I'll try you, J.G. Jones. After the tour today perhaps we can walk in the Central Park and watch the sunset." And here she starts blushin' a little bit and it's the cutest thing, I swear, "I like the sunsets and sunrises a lot..."

Then we're all gettin' in the big tour bus outside the hotel. I get to sit by Natasha 'cuz she's goin' full into this makin' Ivan jealous thing. As her brother sees us like that, she grabs my hand and smiles in a sorta fake cheerful way at him. Without a word he looks at me, then sits at the other end of the bus from us.

Looks like we're gonna get left alone by the commie for a while, and looks like I got a date!

**_A/N: Shorter chapter, I know, but omg, you guys, J.G.'s got a date!_**


	23. Chapter 23

The tour is nice and all, but once it's done, Natasha and I slip outta sight of the others so we can go to the park without bein' noticed. Tomorrow there'll be a meeting with the nations that are goin' to war, and since I'm part of America, I'm expected to at least show up. For now, though, we get on a subway train, which I find kinda scary, with it underground and all, and get off right by the park, since I ain't got a car with me and she can't drive.

We walk through the park, and soon I see a sign that says "Zoo" on it. I ain't never been to a zoo, lackin' the funds. I know you can see all kinds of animals there, even ones from far away. I point it out and Natasha says Alfred might take us there tomorrow, and have I really not ever been to the zoo?

"I grew up poor. Never really got to do anythin'. Only reason I traveled anywhere was 'cuz I was in the army fer a while, and even then I didn't go very far." We're sittin' on a bench now, in the fadin' light.

"You were military?"

"Yeah... Durin' the civil war, I fought in the Southern army."

"Were they the good ones?" She says, seemin' actually curious about it. Guess they don't teach Russian kids about our history.

"I like to think so, even if we were the slaveowners and all... I ain't never owned any slaves though. I was too poor. Didn't even go to school 'til I was eight, and that was at a charity boardin' place." I tell her.

She looks over at me in the half-dark and I can still see those blue-green eyes of hers. Her hand meets mine, and she tells me with a smile,

"You know, maybe you aren't so bad, little Am-err-i-ken."

I smile back at her, and I can only remember one other time I felt this nice, lookin' into someone's eyes, and it was back in school. This time, though, it ain't no Devil tryin' to make me do nothin' bad. I think I'm really in love. She kinda snuggles against me, and I kinda hold her, and we sit there and look at the lights of the city.

Soon, though, she starts to get up.

"It's late. We need to get back to hotel."

"Alright. Come on, we'll get on the underground train-thing again and-"

"_нет_, subway doesn't go this late. We walk."

"Alright, we walk." I agree as we set off. The streets are lined with people tryin' to get home, just like us, but we soon find ourselves in a bad neighborhood. Natasha holds onto my arm a little tighter as we walk. Soon, a man in a mask and a ragged coat jumps out, grabs Natasha and holds a knife to her throat.

"Gimme all your money or the girl gets it!" he growls out, pullin' her tight against him.

"You let her go right now!" I shout, pullin' out my pistol and pointin' straight at his head.

"Hah! Like you'd risk shootin' your girlfriend to get me!" laughs, puttin' the knife harder against a squirmin' Natasha's throat. Then he ain't laughin' no more and looks kinda shocked. Natasha Arlovskaya-Braginski jerks herself free and shows me the three-inch blade of her knife, covered in the mugger's blood. Before I can even begin to figure out what Natasha's doin' carryin' a knife, the man launches himself at the both of us, intendin' to get one of us down fer the stabbin' of his leg.

I react without thinkin' and hear Natasha call out _"J.G., don't!"_ As I get the gun up fast and it fires with a bang that seems to echo in the ghetto neighborhood around me. The man gasps and hits the ground. I only hit his shoulder, so he'll be okay. Either way, I hear sirens and grab Natasha's arm and we take off. Only when we're sittin' in the elevator on our way up to our floor in the hotel does she grab me by the front of my shirt, shove me against the elevator wall and growl at me,

"Listen, J.G. Jones, it was one thing for me to stab someone in self defense, but to shoot him?! What the Hell were you thinking!?" I try to push her away, and it don't work too well, so I just fall back on my old defense for these things:

"It's the second amendment, Nat, in the constitution!"

"Does your constitution really have a rule written in it for shooting muggers?" She growls, grippin' my shirt tighter.

"N-no, not 'pacifically, but I only shot at him 'cuz he attacked us, Nat, you saw it! Besides, he'll be alright, I only got him a lil' bit!"

She sighs and lets me go, mutterin' somethin' like _"goop-anmerikansky"_ to herself. Then, shockin' the Hell outta me, she turns back around, grabs me, smirks, and in front of her brother who's waitin' to get onto the elevator, she kisses me full-on.

The glare that commie bastard gives me as I walk outta the elevator with his sister in hand is probably the icin' on the cake fer that night.


	24. Chapter 24

It's finally the end of the week and time fer me to go home to South Carolina. We decided that Alfred's the one to go to war, rather than me who ain't been trainin' fer years. Alfred, as it turns out, is actually an air force pilot, too. I'm not really upset at leavin' the rest of the nations, even though I've kinda grown fond of some of 'em. I ain't that sad to leave any of 'em. 'Cept fer Natasha. I'd started to callin' her Nat, which I think she likes.

My plane leaves before a lotta the international flights. Nat grabs my hand as I start fer the gate, and she looks right into my eyes, sayin, "I've had fun with you, J.G. Jones. Call me when you get back to your home," and her eyes kinda spark with 'musment, "and try not to shoot any more muggers."

Then she kisses me again, the first time since the elevator, and I really do like the feelin' of her mouth on mine. Then she smiles at me in that smirky way and Alfred's leadin' me through the gate, and I turn to look at all of the nations, who I know are like a family with each other, and part of me hopes someday it'll be like that with me too, and I wave, and they all wave back, 'specially Nat, who I can see might even be cryin' and I turn to Alfred and smile at him, tellin' him,

"You be careful overseas, and don't do nothin' stupid, ya hear?"

"Yeah, yeah... Same to you, J.G." He says, lookin' a little serious at that last part. I realize then- that's the first time he's really said my name, and not the "nation name" fer me, "South," since... _"Jason G. Jones... personification of the Confederate States of America, right?"_

I take it to mean a sign of respect, and I look back at Alfred the Yankee from the airplane window thinkin' about it. Alfred stands there until the plane's took off, and then I've got three hours t' think about the nations and to think about family, and goin' home.

* * *

><p><em>"Country roaaaad, take me hooooome<em>

_to the plaaaace where I beloooong..."_

The radio goes as I start down the long driveway to the little house. I don't got much since the government took the big cottonfields that I used to run through on Big Farm, but I'm proud of what I got, which is a decent little house, a whole ten acres of woods and fields, and one lil' coonhound who's real happy to see my red pickup come down the road again.

"Hey, hey, down, Skipper, down!" I say, pushin' him, and gettin' my hands lapped all over with his hot tongue for it. I just give up and laugh, lettin' him jump all over as I go to the house. It's dark, but not cold. One 'o the good things about livin' in South Carolina is it never really gets real cold. I look at the number Nat gave me before I got on the plane, and decide to wait 'til tomorrow to call. After all, I did just get home, and I ain't been there fer a whole week.

So, with Skip followin' me around my little, familiar house, I go get supper on, eat it, and go to bed. I expect to dream 'bout Nat, but insead I just have the same dreams I had the whole time I was around the other nations, of bein' a lil' kid, bein' told to run. I dunno what the dreams have to do with anything, but I been havin' 'em my whole life.

Funny thing, though. I dunno nothin' but English, but I know the woman in my dreams ain't speakin' it- she's talkin' Spanish. Dunno how I understand her, but I do. Guess all nations can understand all the languages.

Ah, well. In the mornin' I'm gonna talk to Nat again.

* * *

><p>The phone's ringin' as I wake and I turn over and get it right away, only gettin' my glasses after.<p>

"Hullo, Jones here." I say.

"J.G.?" It's Nat. I recognize her voice anywhere. I scramble to get up and push Skipper down.

"Yeah, I'm here. Mornin', Nat. Sorry I didn't call last night. Thought you'd be asleep by the time I got here." I run a hand through my messy hair and look at the faint freckles on my arm that ain't holdin' the phone.

"That is alright. I called first to ask- Ivan has business in America in about a month. He offered to take me so I can visit you. Would you like to?"

"Yeah, of course I wanna see you again!" I hope I don't sound too much like a happy puppy. Although, I could'a sworn the commie don't like me, as I sure ain't too fond 'o him. Maybe he's just glad it seems like his sister don't wanna marry him at this time and he wants to encourage it.

"Hmm, I thought you might." Then, as if she's remindin' me, "But remember we're only trying to make big brother jealous, so he'll want me, _да_?"

"Y-yeah... right..." I say. Maybe she don't like me after all, I start to think. "Although, Nat, I'd think he wouldn't wanna take you to me if he was that jealous." I say.

"..._да_... you're right..." She agrees, "Well... maybe I just want to see you again, silly Am-err-i-ken."

"Well no matter yer motive, my address is-"

"546, Fredrickson Lane, Allan, South Carolina, _да_?"

"Yeah..." I look real confused at the phone, "Where'd you hear that?"

"Alfred told me, because I asked." She says, bluntly.

"See, and yer sayin' you don't like me!"

"Whatever my motive, I will see you in a month, J.G."

"Yeah. A month. Seeya, Nat."

"_до свидания_, J.G."

And with that, I'm left with the answerin' machine beepin', 'cuz I'm needed to help haul somethin' or another, and feelin' the most impatient I felt since I was a kid waitin' fer a midday meal.


	25. Chapter 25

It's been a month, and it's now gettin' to be winter here in South Carolina. I gotta wear my jacket places, and Skipper's gettin' his winter fur. Snow ain't come, as it only rarely does here in Allan, 'specially 'cuz of global warmin', they say on the TV. Shiverin' here, by the creek on a November afternoon, I ain't inclined to believe in such things as the earth warmin' up fast.

What I'm doin' out here is gettin' food fer me and Skip. I ain't much into the fur trade, but work's been scarce this year, and as such money, so I'm out checkin' my trapline fer whatever fuzzy thing I can get, eat and sell the skin of when I see a taxicab goin' down the drive. Skip see's it first and takes off runnin' after it, barkin' like mad, and I put my gun on my back with its strap and I'm off after him, as immature as it is to run like an idiot just 'cuz someone's comin' up yer drive.

Wait, was the rifle currently bouncin' along on my back as I run loaded? It probably is, since I was huntin'. I brush that thought off and keep goin'. I'm almost to the house now. Wait a sec... Is the safety off? Probably, since I was hunt- _BAM_

* * *

><p><em>"J.G... J.G..."<em>

The woman's voice calls fer me. _Sarah?_ I think, groanin' n' strugglin' to open my eyes against the pain in my head 'n the heaviness in me that makes me wanna sleep ferever...

_"Come on, J.G., wake up!"_

_I don' wan' git up, Sarah... My head hurts too much... tell Mister t' put me on the sick-list._ There's somethin' wet on my face now. Wet and cool. I can't feel much else through the pain. The woman's still callin' me, but she don't sound like Sarah did. In fact, she ain't Southern at all, or 'Merican.

"J.G., please, please wake up!"

I manage to drag myself outta the heaviness and I open my eyes to look into the worried blue-green eyes of Natasha Arlovskaya-Braginski. It's the first time I ever saw her so scared. I don't like it, how her nice smooth face wrinkles up when she's got her eyes makin' the scared e'spression. I sorta look at her, then the wetted cloth glove in her hand, then I notice I'm lyin' in the woods just off the drive leadin' to the house with somethin' under my head.

"Nat... What happened? How'd you get here? How'd I get here?" She looks at me, wordlessly, then picks up the rifle from next to her, and with a quick movement of her hands and a _click-click_ from the gun she picks up and shows me the empty cartridge.

"This is what happen. You ran with it on your back, and it went off."

She don't need to tell me the rest. I probably got myself in the back of the head, and then collapsed, as folks generally do when they been shot in the head, and she ran t' help me 'til I woke up, knowin' I can't die with nation blood in me. Probably a whole lot less blood than I started with, but nation blood all the same. I sit up against a tree with her help and look around more.

My jacket is stiff, 'specially in the back. Probably got my blood and brains all on it. Nat's jacket, I can see, was what was under my head, and it's soaked in the reddish-brown of dryin' blood. My hair, too, is caked in the stuff, worst in the back. I ain't never hurt myself that bad before. I should'a died, most would'a. There's a reason you ain't never, ever s'posed to run with a loaded shotgun on yer back. Most, if they make that mistake, it's the last thing they ever do. I'm lucky, 'cuz I'm special, but fer sure I won't be makin' it again. It feels like a million bigrig trucks are stacked on my poor head and with spikes in their tires to boot.

"Ow." I tell Nat.

"'Ow' would be a correct thing to say when you have shot yourself in the head like idiot. You could have died! We nation are hard to kill, but you seem to be intended on tryink every way to do it."

"Nice t' see you too."

* * *

><p>After I'm well 'nough to walk back to the house, we do it. Nat's lecturin' me the whole way 'bout how I should be more careful if I gotta have that thing in my house and what if we ever git married 'n have kids, will I know t' keep it away from 'em 'r will they get shot up too?<p>

I ain't that irresponsible. It's a basic rule to keep yer guns up outta reach of lil' kids. I also appre-see-ate the way Nat's talkin', like she wants to get married and have a family with me.

"Look, it may be small, but it's been mine since 1865, and ain't no government men gonna change that." I tell Nat as we go up to the broken-down lil' house. Rememberin' the big planter's mansion that used to be on this land makes me a lil' bit sad, so I don't.

Instead, I take Nat inside. I show her the creaky bed I sleep in and say,

"You sleep here. I'll have the couch out in the livin' room." She starts to object to that, but I keep tellin' her, "It ain't proper fer us to share a bed. Not yet, anyway, and I ain't makin' a lady sleep on the couch as I've got good morals."

To that she says,

"J.G., you took shotgun shell to the head an hour ago. You will have bed, because my morals will not make me make someone like you sleep on that couch."

"See, I'm tryin' to be all proper and good, and you ain't makin' it easy."

"Why can't we share the bed? I share with my big brother all the time!"

"Nat, I told you it ain't proper!"

"I'm tellink you it is fine!"

I go to run my fingers through my hair like I'm thinkin' about it, and as they hit nothin' but a hardened, kinda fuzzy mess, I realize I must look a sight, with my hair still all stuck to my head with dried blood.

"Look, Nat," I say, "I'm gonna drop this fer now, only 'cuz I gotta shower, then git us somethin' to eat."

After scrubbin' at my hair until the lil' mirror in the bathroom tells me it looks normal and gold if not a lil' bit dirty from the less-than-clean water, I come back out to where Nat is watchin' TV.

"You do not have food?" she asks.

"I was tryin' to git some when you come over." I tell her.

"There won't be animal out in the winter." She says, raisin' her eyebrows at me.

"Sure there is! There's a couple'a deers prob'ly, and fer sure I could git a possum or coon, maybe a squirrel'r two... Ya like squirrel-possum stew, Nat?." She's lookin' at me kinda funny, so I just say, "I ain't got no money so we gotta live with what we kin git 'round here."

"I have money. Ivan gave me credit card."

"Why?"

"I looked up address on mapping service and saw how poor it looked, so I ask Ivan for money."

"That's a lil' bit creepy, Nat." I tell her, "But if you got money, we kin go to the store in town and buy our supper!" She smiles in her smirky way as we head out to the red pickup.

"If you cook as good as you shoot yourself, I know I will enjoy it."


	26. Chapter 26

When we're back from the store, I ask Nat if she can cook.

"Of course I can. But it is best for the host to make his guest food, да?"

"Yeah... just checkin'. Don't wanna date a girl who cain't cook for her own self."

"Hm." Is all she's got to say about that, so I go to the kitchen and start to makin' food. I make porkchops, which are expensive but real good, and mashed 'taters, 'cuz they're one o' my favorite things, and sweet 'taters, 'cuz I heard somewhere they're good fer you and the little grocery ain't got much in the way of greens and veggies this time 'o the year and then I set some berry cobbler to cook too fer dessert, and then we're at the little fold-up table to eat.

"Sorry I ain't got a big farmhouse or mansion or nothin'..." I tell Nat over dinner.

"It is okay. I used to not have home. We lived in the snowy Russia for long time alone."

"That must've been hard." Is all I can say.

"да, it was, but we did it, did we not?" She takes a bite of her pork, sayin', "Mm, that is good."

"Well, I learned it from the best." I say. Ol' Cook Hattie, the cook back on Big Farm'd been to every Southern state in her lifetime and visited a few North. She could make any food, and even though I wasn't a lil' girl and didn't need to learn, she taught me cookin' with the girls in case I needed it when I got bigger.

"So, J.G., you did not know you were nation until you were how old?" She asks of me. I swallow the bite of sweet 'tater in my mouth.

"Er, fifteen. Maybe sixteen. I ain't too sure."

"Why did you not know? Were you not raised nation?" She says, lookin' real interested.

"Well... No. I got brought up by normal human folk on a plantation 'til I was 'bout eight."

"What is 'plantation?'" She asks, lookin' even more interested.

"Back before the civil war, it meant a Southern farm that's owner, the planter, had more'n fifty slave workers pickin' on it."

"Sound's terrible." She says.

"Well, it wa'nt too bad, and supplied ev'rone with the cotton they needed."

"Of course it was not too bad for a white boy to live on a farm worked by black slaves." She says, lookin' kinda hard at me.

"Hey, I did work too! I had'a haul waterbuckets out to workers so's they didn't collapse in the heat."

"Poor, poor waterboy J.G." She says without a change in her e'spression.

"I aways got told it was okay 'cuz Negroes'r too dumb to do much else so we gotta give 'em somethin' to do so they don't run things to ruins." I say, lookin' right back at her. Somethin' in my mind's tellin' me that ain't right, but I ignore it. I'm just a poor backwoods kid, practically. I don't know nothin' but what I been told.

"That is a very... insensitive mindset, J.G." she says, raisin' her one eyebrow at me, "you might want to keepink your mouth shut about it at meetink."

"It ain't insens'tive if it's just what I been taught." I say.

"Why do I always fall for the bad ones?" She asks out loud, "First my big brother, and now, I'm startink to like you, J.G. Jones, even with the backwvards and racist way of thought."

"I ain't backwards and I sure ain't racist!" I say in my defense, "I just got opinons that other people don't share in, and that's okay."

At least, I hope it's okay... I did like how she said she's fallin' fer me, though.

* * *

><p>In the end, Nat and I share the bed, despite my sayin' it's bad and improper. I face away from her and take my shirt off, as I do to sleep. Like, everyone, she notices somethin' right away.<p>

"J.G., your back... you're scarred?" She asks, runnin' her fingers over the lines in my back.

"Yup." I say. I'm still kinda upset over losin' that argument over who sleeps where. I ain't never lost a argument to a girl 'fore.

"What happened?"

"Whip." I say shortly.

"Why were you whipped?"

"Somethin' bad I done."

"What was the bad you did?"

"Sinnin'." I say.

"What sort of sin?"

"Bad one."

"What one exactly?"

"Cain't tell ya. Ya might get possessed."

"I think I am okay. What happened?"

"Told'ja. Whip." She sighs at me.

"You are not tellink me in purpose."

"Maybe ya shouldn't'a asked."

She leaves it at that and puts on her nightdress which is real pretty dark blue with white at the collar and ends of the sleeves. The bed's kinda small, so she's kinda gotta lay on me halfway to fit.

"I should'a slept on the couch." I tell her.

"J.G., I told you there is nothink wrong with sharink bed."

"It ain't proper."

"Says who?"

"It just ain't."

"Is this more proper?" She asks, and then she kisses me.

I let her do it, and she's makin' these nice sounds and puttin' her hands all over me and she kisses all over my neck and chest just like... No, it really ain't proper to think of that. So I focus on Nat kissin' me and it feels real good, and then she starts to take her nightshirt off and I get back into focus and stop her.

"J.G., what are you doink?" she asks, as I pull her dress back down.

"It ain't proper, doin' those things when we ain't married." I say, lookin' real seriously at her.

"It wouldn't be my first time, Jones." She says, soundin' kinda irritated.

"Well, Miss Arlovskaya, yer first time with me is gonna be our weddin' night." I tell her right back with the same tone.

"You have hardly know me for a month and yet you talk of marriage?"

"Ain't this normal fer nations?" I ask, "We gotta settle down 'fore our alliances git in the way of things, right?"

"I guess so. At least wait another month, J.G."

"'Long as yer willin' to wait to do... those things I will." I say, tryin' to push her off of me, "And you got my word on that, Miss."

"You really are strange. You talk roughly and harsh, yet you have such moral... Very strange." She says, smirkin' like she does.

"I always tried to be the true Southern gentleman." I say back, feelin' pretty sat-is-fied with the way I done things.

Always gotta be proper and polite, 'cuz that's the way I was brought up.


	27. Chapter 27

Nat says she wants me to show her how to hunt, as she ain't never done it before. I don't think a lady should have to know such things, but if she wants to learn, there really ain't no denyin' her. She ain't never fired a rifle before, so I gotta teach her that first, in the front yard, with bottles set on the rickety fence.

"First of all, you gotta put this," I show her the cartridge, "into here." I put it in the gun all properly. Then, I show her a switch, "Look, see? This here thing's the safety. You always gotta have it on when you ain't lookin' to shoot somethin', or that somethin' might be you."

"Perhaps you should take own advice." She says, smirkin' at me.

"You kin shut the Hell yer mouth, first off. Second..."

Soon, she's got it, and shootin' the bottles with decent accuracy. Hearin' the sounds of it, the neighbor's kid, Jenny, pops up over the fence. She's about sixteen and kinda plain lookin', but I hear the boys at the high school are fond enough of her.

"What'cha doin' out here, Mr. Jones?" She asks.

"Teachin' my friend Nat here how to hunt. First thing fer her to learn is firin' the gun!"

"Wowie!" Jenny says, grinnin', "I've know how to shoot since a'fore I kin remember, but I bet you'll git it soon enough, Miss!"

"I am sure that I will." Nat says, keepin' her expression serious.

"Say, Jenny, don't'cha have schoolwork do be doin'?" I ask of the brown-haired girl.

"Hey, yeah! Thanks fer remindin' me, Mr. Jones! Seeya 'round!" With that her head goes back below the fence and I go back to teachin' Nat.

"So, now that you got it mostly, we kin go out and check the traps I'd set up yesterday." I tell her.

"Do traps not kill the animals?" She says, lookin' a lil' bit upset by the thought.

"Nahhhh. Usually they're caught by a leg and I gotta shoot 'em through the head to make 'em dead." I say, crackin' a smile at her.

"That sound terrible." She says, lookin' a lil' bit less excited to go huntin' with me.

"Well, what'd be worse is leavin' 'em trapped out there to starve in the winter weather, so let's go git 'em, hey Nat?"

"_да_, I suppose so." She says, followin' me as I start into the woods, whistlin' fer Skipper to come follow us.

"Alright, here's the first one comin' up here." I tell her as we're gettin' close to the stream, "I'm hopin' to git a beaver or a mink maybe. I kin eat the meat of anything, but I cain't sell possum's coat fer much."

"Oh my goodness, J.G., look!" She gasps, pointin' at the thing in front of us. Actually it's a bunch'a things.

"Hush up, Nat." I remind her, "Looks like a coon. Maybe a couple'a 'em."

"J.G., look, the little ones!" She says.

Shoot. I ain't gonna kill a mama coon and leave her babies all alone. I make Skip stay and tell Nat to stay with him. I got forward to lookit the sit-ation. The mama coon don't look well, like she been out here all night in the cold. The babies, two of 'em, are pawin' at her and makin' pitiful lil' chitterin' sounds. They scamper off a bit and then stop to look back at me when I go to the trap.

"PrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRrr!" chirps mama coon when I git too close. She gives it up when it's clear I ain't goin' away, and I kin get to the trap clamped on her foot. It's cut a lil' bit into her ankle with the strugglin', but she'll be okay. She chirps to her lil' ones: _"Brrrrrrrr"_ and they follow her, leavin' me there watchin' the lil' family waddle off with their bushy striped tails draggin' behind 'em.

I leave the trap set and go back to Nat.

"Took care of 'em. Let's go to the next one." I say, and she quietly nods and follows me. Soon, we're on a beaver in one of the traps by the stream.

"Okay, Nat, what ya wanna do is aim fer his head. He won't feel a thing and it won't hurt the pelt."

"But he is cute!"

"Lettin' things go 'cuz they're cute is how you starve to death." I tell her. "Now go up to him, yeah, like that, and put the gun up- Nat, quick yer shakin', you wanted to learn this. Now, point it, like that, good... now pull yer trigger." She does, and I catch her a bit to keep the recoil from makin' her hit herself in the face with the thing. The beaver ain't strugglin' to git away from us no more. I go and pick it up, and let her see.

She reaches out and touches the fuzzy brown thing in my hands and sorta smiles.

"That was not as bad as I thought." She says.

"And we kin have fried beaver fer lunch!" I say, grinnin' back at her. She only sighs.

"You really are strange one, J.G."


	28. Chapter 28

It's been two weeks with Nat, as that's how long her brother's business trip was. She don't wanna leave, and I don't wanna see her go, but we ain't more'n girlfriend and boyfriend right now, so she's gotta go home. Her last night in town, we go out to eat at one of the fancy restaurants in Colombia. That means I gotta wear a tie and a suit-jacket, which I don't like one bit. Gotta look proper, though. Gotta talk proper too. Don't want the people in the fancy restaurant thinkin' I'm some backwoods hillbilly, even though I prob'ly am.

So Nat wears her best dress she's got with her and I wear the stupid stiff jacket and stupid chokin' tie and we go.

"Ah, Mister and Missus Jones?" The waiter girl asks of us, lookin' at her clipboard.

"Yes, ma'am." I say and I can feel Nat tryin' not to smile. I don't really gotta be formal, not with a waiter girl, but I'm nervous and go back to old habits when I am.

"Right this way, then." Waiter Girl says, leadin' us to the table. There's this nice white tablecloth and Waiter Girl sets down menus as we sit. I open it up and start tryin' to look through it.

"What do you think of the lobster dish, J.G.?" Nat asks me.

"Uhh." I say, lookin' for the picture of a lobster. I never have gotten to be able to read too well, and I ain't gonna let it show here. "Seems nice." I finally decide.

"Hm." Nat says.

"I like this here thing." I say, pointin' to a picture that looks to be a kind of fish.

"The salmon? I suppose, although I am not too fond of fish." She says.

"Sah-mon..." I repeat, lookin' at the word. I did it without thinkin' and Nat looks at me funny.

"Yes, I did said salmon." She agrees with me.

"Funny word, ain't it? Looks like it should be "sall-mon" but it ain't." I say, makin' myself smile.

"_да_. Many English words are strange to me, and salmon is one of them." She smiles back.

I'm doin' real well at functionin' like this, I think, until we're back in the car, Nat smilin' at me 'cuz she had fun, and then we drive fer a bit, and then she turns to me.

"J.G.," she starts, "do you have troubles with readink?"

"N-not that I know of, why?" I say, a bit startled.

"I could see the way your face went concentration when you were lookink at menu."

"I went t'school fer four years, Nat. I think I kin read just fine." I tell her. I got that stupid tie and jacket off and am just in my shirt. It feels a big relief.

"J.G., can you spell 'earthquake' for me?"

"Pssh, 'course I can!" I say, real confident. "E-A-R-T-H, that's the 'earth' part, and Q-..." I only stopped a minute 'fore goin' on, "W-A-K-E!"

"J.G., it is the Q-U instead of the W." She says, lookin' at me with no small 'musment in her eyes.

"Shut the hell yer mouth, woman. I know what I'm talkin' about." I say back. "I went to school and you didn't."

"Your school does not seem to be the best, I am afraid." She says with a sort of sigh. I don't say another word and instead turn off of the main road we were followin' and go to a dirt one. I know this area real good 'cuz it all used to be Big Farm, but Nat's gettin' nervous.

"J.G., where are you takink me?"

"You'll see. I ain't got nothin' dirty on my mind if that's what yer scared of. I ain't one of those kinds of guys." She don't say nothin', just sits back in the seat. Soon we're at this real pretty ridge where the old Big Farm orchard make a sorta clearing that you can see the stars in.

"Come on." I say, leavin' the car. Nat follows me. Soon we're sittin' in the clearing and I point up. "Lookit that. Ain't it pretty?" She smiles and gets closer to me in the cool night.

"_да_, it's beautiful..."

I sorta smile over at her and we look at the stars fer a bit. Then I help her back up and look into her green-blue eyes as we're standin' there in the dark, me holdin' her soft, nice hands in mine.

"Nat... you gotta go home tomorrow and I know you don't wanna, and I don't wanna see you leave. I know that I said I was gonna wait, but y'know we might be at war 'r somethin' that keeps us apart a'fore then... and I do love you... and I don't wanna be apart no more. So... I guess... d'y'wanna git married?"

"J.G..." She says, lookin' right at me, and I can see her eyes are tearin' up, "J.G. Jones... I love you too, and of course I want to be married, silly Am-err-i-ken!" and then she hugs me tight, and kisses me, and well, we're both real, real happy on that day, the 18th of November in 2001.


	29. Chapter 29

Since Nat and I are engaged now, we set a date for the weddin'- August 14, 2002. It gave us a good amount of time to prepare. I managed to scrape up money fer a gold ring, too. Nat said she don't need such things, but I say it's tradition. I'm also tryin' to find us a better place to live, but not too hard. But Nat one day asks,

"When we have family, where will the children sleep?"

"I kin build another room, no problem!"

"Did you not fall off the roof yesterday because you thought squirrel might be nestink in drainpipe?"

"I don't fall off that off'en, honest!" I say, lookin' at my hand she's bandagin'. I got it with a nail while I was tryin' to make the table quit collapsin' on us.

"J.G., I don't think you were cut out to be handy-man."

"Speakin' of which, why ain't my hand healed by now?" I say, lookin' at the bloody spot formin' in the bandages.

"Nation don't heal readily from self-inflicted injury." She says, finishin' the bandagin'. "Now, do you have tetanus shot?"

"Nope. I don't got none of those things. They ain't good fer you." I tell her, feelin' real proud. I ain't stupid, and I know that gettin' yerself vaccinated is just another way of the yankee government to hurt you.

"You are not vaccinated?" She asks, starin' at me.

"Yeah, and it's fer my best interests, too." I say, lookin' hard at her. I'm thinkin' of the way how I got made to get one of my shots, 'an-thrax' they called it, and the place the needle went in got all swollen up and itched and hurt fer a whole day after. I ain't gonna go back to the doctor to tell 'em about it 'cuz I bet it happens to everyone and I bet they think it's normal 'cuz that's what they been told. I know better.

"I am sure it is." Nat says with her sarcastic-serious expression, "But gettink tetanus is not. I'm takink you to doktor."

"Nat, come on! I ain't gonna go and let 'em poke at it! I'm fine!" I say. When she looks like she don't believe me, I keep goin', "Lookit! It quit bleedin' already! I don't need no doctor."

"What of the thousands of children who cannot get the shot and die every year?" Nat says, crossin' her arms.

"Looky here, Nat, if God meant us to not sometimes lose our lives to sickness, He wouldn'a made us able to git 'em." I say back.

She just sighs and don't push it no more. Good. She's a good girl, and I love her, but Nat's gotta 'member where her place is sometimes, I think. I don't go to get the tetanus-shot and I don't get sick neither, so it's all good.

* * *

><p>Nat's moved in with me now, after tellin' her brother and sister her plans to get married. She said they were real shocked to hear their baby sister was marryin' a 'Merican. We sometimes just sit at the lil' table and talk, 'stead of watchin' TV or doin' paperwork or nothin'. Kinda reminds me of the lazy Sunday afternoons back at school with me and... Well, I ain't gonna think about him, 'cuz it's the Devil tryin' to git back into my head, I hear. Nat's also teachin' me more about the nations, which I really like.<p>

"So, J.G." Nat starts off, like she does a lot, "Nation have important birthdays- mine is the 25, August. That is the day my country made its own after the breakup of Soviet Union. What about you?"

"D'cember 20, which is the day that South Carolina s'ceded from the Union in 1860 and made my country." I say, proudly, "I always got treated as good luck by the other soldiers, bein' a boy born on that day."

"Interestink. What about languages?"

"I only know English, and that's all I need to know." I say, lookin' even prouder.

"I speak Russian and English, and I am workink on Polish. More language is not a bad thing, you know." She says back. "What about how you grew up? If not brought up by nation, who did?"

"I got taken into a plantation 'til I was eight, I said, and then I went to school 'til I was twelve, and then I ran 'way to go to the war 'til I was fifteen and it was over." I tell her.

"да, that is what you have said. But what kind of people on plantation brought you up? To be poor? If we are to be married you should tell me."

She's right. I sorta look down at my hands.

"Well... When I was just a lil' kid, 'bout five, I was runnin' through the woods, and I don't 'member nothin' before that, 'cept that I'd been told to run 'til I couldn't no more, and then I ended up behind some kind'a cabin, and..." I kinda looked away, "One'a the slave women found me there, and she was the one that kinda took care'a me, 'til the planter found me out and made me go 'way to school." Nat only nods.

"What happen at school to make you run away?"

"...Nothin' important. Just wan'ed to, I guess." I say. I'll take that shameful secret to the grave. Plus, maybe by speakin' of it I'll make Nat git possessed, and I don't want that.

"J.G., you can tell me." She says, puttin' her hands on mine.

"You'll be possessed if I do." I tell her.

"I think I will be okay. Demons are scared of me, after all."

"What do you know 'bout demons?" I ask of her.

"A lot. Angels and spirits too. I can see them, after all. It's my Third Ability."

"Yer what?" She smiles.

"All nation are born with livink forever and inability to be hurt. We also all have a Third Ability. It is somethink that no human can do. A super-power, I think you might call it. Alfred can lift one of the big semi-trucks above his head and throw it. Arthur can do thing that pass as magical. I can see and talk to supernatural creature."

"What kin I do?" I ask, leanin' in closer. I'm kinda glad the conversation shifted away from my past.

"Besides get yourself injured, I do not know." Nat says, doin' her smirky-half-smile thing. I go over my skills in my head and try to think of one that I ain't learned, just always had.

"I... kin fire a gun." I say.

"You live in South. Of course you can." Nat says back.

"Well, I never was taught, only handed it and told with the other boys to shoot the targets." I say.

"What about other thing?"

"Weyy-l... I guess when I was real little I could always know what was wrong with a farmin' machine, even if I never saw it in my life. I got told it was a gift." I say, scratchin' my head.

"If I hand you thing you have never seen, can you find how to use it?"

"Yeah. When I got work, they kin put me in front of a machine I cain't even say the name of, but I know how'da work it in a minute. Soon as I git in control of it, it seems like." I tell Nat, thinkin' just now of how strange that is. Most people gotta lookit the manual first, but not me. I never thought it strange 'til now. Nat smiles.

"That sound like your Third Ability. You can operate any machine you put hands on." Then, she stops and stares into the livin' room a lil'. "What kind of family live here before, on plantation?"

"Uh," I say, "What'dya mean?"

"Like, what they looked like." She says.

"Well, the planter had kinda brown hair... they all did, and the daughter had hazel green eyes, and she said her lil' brother who died did too, just like their mama, and, uh..." Nat stops me.

"Strange. Maybe he connected on to you, then."

"Uh, what?" I say, lookin' at her in confusion.

"The man I have seen around you. He has red hair. Well, more orange, really. He is very faint, like he is old and startink to leave. He does not talk, but looks at you with this kind of a longink look in eyes." She smiles and looks behind me, probably at the outline of the man, "He wears a dark blue soldier outfit, and his eyes are dark green-"

"Dark like a forest at night..." I finish for her.

"да... You know him?"

"The 'scription just reminds me 'o someone I saw once, is all." I say, swallowin' hard. Nat might be crazy, but with that 'scription, I can't be too sure 'bout that.


	30. Chapter 30

_"Hey, J.G.?" The orange-haired boy looks over at me._

_"Yeah, Row?"_

_"My father tells me war has broken out. The Southern states are seceding. That means leaving." _

_"Yeah, and?" I look at his pale face and dark green eyes. It's summer and we're both sittin' under the shade of a tree in the horse-pastures, far from the other boys._

_"I wondered, if we were to get involved, in Missouri, would you side with the Union, or the Southerners?"_

_"I dunno." I say, thinkin' real hard about it. "I'm Southern myself, so I'd be inclined to join up with 'em, but I don't wanna fight 'gainst you!"_

_"Well then," he says, "I suppose we'll just have to not go to war."_

I wake up 'cuz Nat's dropped her ice-pack she sleeps with 'cuz it's hot at night right on my bare chest. Hard.

"Jason, _wake up_!" She says, in what I know is pure terror. I'm up in a second.

"What? What is it?" I ask, gropin' fer my glasses.

"Listen, you idiot!" she says. Then I hear it.

_"rrrrrrrrrrwwwwwwwwwweeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOWWWWWWW"_

It's a high note that makes my mind go on alert. Partially 'cuz of the unatural whine, but mostly 'cuz I know 'xactly what it is.

"Nat, we gotta git into the cellar!" I tell her and grab her arm. It was thunderstormin' last night, but now this?

"J.G., _what_ is it? Air raid? Nuclear attack? Those are only thing I know make the siren go!" She says as I drag her.

"Twister." I say. "It'll rip this house right up and us in it if we don't git below the ground!"

We do, and stay huddled in the basement, Nat in my arms. I got my lil' battery-powered radio goin', tryin' to keep tabs on what's happenin'.

_"The final touchdown is predicted to be just south of Allan in Sanderson County. Citizens in and around the town are advised to seek shelter and stay clear of windows until the all-clear signal..." _

I shiver a lil' bit. I can still hear the splittin' whine of the siren, even down here. Nat can too, and she huddles close to me.

"They don't usually hit this far east." I tell her, "Mostly it's Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas that git it worst."

"J.G., I am afraid..." She says, tryin' to press herself all the way against me.

"It's alright, Nat. We got twisters on the plantation too. All of us, slave, overseer and family would try to git into any lil' hole we could when we heard that awful roarin'. I always ran straight fer the root cellar. It was strong, and didn't have a whole lotta stuff on top o' it that could crush me. Just a lil' shack." I'm talkin' 'bout anything I can to calm her down, "Plus, the root cellar had all the preserves. Twisters ain't so bad when yer a lil' boy eatin' peach preserves with yer sticky lil' hands and hidin' underground."

"W-what about... durink the war. What you do then?" She gits closer as the siren picks up again and I hear a sorta roarin', like a freight train off in the distance. "Ohhh, please make the awful howlink stop." She pleads. I hold her closer. I hate seein' someone like Nat so scared. Somethin' awful must'a happened to make her scared of the siren's eerie sounds. They're unsettlin', sure, but that's alright by me 'cuz bein' unsettled sure beats dyin' in a death wind funnel-thing. I keep talkin', as that's the only comfort I can offer right now.

"Durin' the war we'd git into whatever ditch we could and then pray. If you were on the river when it happened, you were done for." I tell her. The roarin' sound's gettin' closer. "At school, we didn't have very many twisters, but I knew all us boys knew what to do. 'Cept for a couple that were yankees- y'know, northerners." She whimpers and gits closer. "Hmm..." I say. Then it hits me.

_"Mine eyes have seen the comin' of the glory of the lord"_ It's an old yankee song, I know, but maybe, just maybe it'll calm her down if I sing slow and even, like when yer tryin' to make a kid quit cryin'.

_"He is tramplin' out the vint-age where the grapes of wrath are stored;_

_He hath loosed the fateful lightnin' of His terrible swift sword:_

_His truth is marchin' on."_

She looks up a little as I kinda stamp to make a beat. The roarin' is almost drownin' me out now.

_"Glorrry, glory, hallejuuuuuu-yah,_

_Glorrrrrry, glory hallejuuuu-yah,_

_Glorrry, glory hallejuuuuuuu-yah,_

_His truth is marchin' ooooon..."_

"A-again..." She says softly, "The last part, please..." I hold her closer as the twister's nearly on top of us now.

_"Glorrry, glory, hallejuuuuuu-yah,"_

Skipper, lyin' next to me lets out a whine.

_"Glorrrrrry, glory hallejuuuu-yah,"_

I can hear everythin' above us bein' flung all over the place. I'm probably gonna have to fix the roof again, if the place ain't leveled.

_"Glorrry, glory hallejuuuuuuu-yah,"_

I know we're gonna be okay when the roarin' stops fer a moment and then goes again fer a few more. _We're gonna be okay._ Maybe livin' in the South ain't what Nat's good at.

_His truth is marchin' ooooon..."_

* * *

><p>After the siren sounds one last long, whinin' note, Nat, Skipper and I come outta the cellar. Everythin's gone. The house had been leveled, like I thought.<p>

"Dear God..." Nat murmurs next to me as we look at the destruction. From climbin' out of the wreckage, both of our clothes, put on fast, are dirty and a lil' bit ripped in some places. All I got is the boxers I slept in, my red plaid shirt, torn jeans and my glasses. Nat's got her white shirt and dark blue skirt. Neither of us had shoes.

"Guess what we gotta do is gather what we can and set out to the main road." I say, lookin' around fer at least the truck. It's in a tree, but otherwise seems unhurt. I look at Nat, who found her dark blue bow in the rubble and is dustin' it off. "We ain't gotta walk if we kin figure a way to git the truck down without hurtin' it." I say, pointin'. She slowly looks up at it.

"It's close to ground. Get in and make it drive off." She says in a tired way. Just then the tree gives, makin' the red pickup drop to the ground with a crash.

"Or not." I say, lookin' at the now kinda smashed-in car. "It won't work like that. We're walkin'."

We sift through the rubble and find among other lil' things my shotgun, a box of cartridges (which I dump into a knapsack I tied together from some cloths we got), a bit of rope, which I both use to make our make-shift bags easier to carry and loop around my waist in way of a belt, since I ain't got one at the moment, and some canned foods from the pantry. I also found a jar of clear stuff, and I know exactly what it is when I take the cap off and sniff it. Moonshine. Strong, too.

"Hey Nat, wanna sip of this? Might calm yer nerves!" I call out. She kinda jerkily walks over.

"How are you yourself so calm when your home has been destroyed?" She wonders, takin' the jar from me. She gags when she sips from it. "Ack! And what the Hell is this?! It burns my throat!"

"Home-made stuff. And I ain't too upset 'cuz maybe the state'll re-build it as that plantation-style mansion I always wanted!" I joke, because Nat seems like she needs to calm down a lil' bit so she can at least function right. "Anyway, I think we got everythin'. Let's git outta here. C'mon, Skip!"

With that and lookin' like a couple'a proper hillbillies, we head off down the dirt road.

* * *

><p>The truck with the big red plus on it slows down and pulls over in front of us as I go runnin' towards it, my gun bouncin' all over on my back again.<p>

"J.G., the gun!" Nat says wearily.

"Safety's on, Nat!" I call back at her.

A pretty young woman gits outta the car and asks me why we flagged her down.

"My house got leveled in the twister, Miss." I tell her simply, "And I know yer fine or-gan-i-zation kin help with those that ain't got homes no more."

"That we can, sir. What's your name and how many in your household?"

"Jason Jones, and there's me, my fiancè, Natasha and our dog Skipper." She smiles brightly at Nat as she walks up.

"Alright. We have a shelter set up in the high school. We will have to take the dog to an animal rescue station, but y'all can come see him whenever you like!" I can tell she's from the city 'cuz her accent ain't nearly as heavy as mine. Either way, we git into the van and are soon sittin' in a crowded school gym on creaky lil' cots.

"J.G." Nat says, and I look over at her.

"What?"

"We are movink North, soon as we are married." She sounds dead serious. I don't even try to argue.

"Yes, ma'am."


	31. Chapter 31

The state don't rebuild the house into a fancy mansion, but through a lil' bit of talkin' and charmin' the right people, I at least get it to be made a lil' bit bigger, and they clear a section of the woods fer me to make a nice lil' farmhouse-lookin' scene when you come up the drive. It only took 'em a month and a half, too.

Luckily that was the worst storm of the summer and after that, there's no more 'cuz twisters only happen in spring and early June. It does keep gettin' hotter, though, and even if I'm used to the heat and kinda like it over the cold, Nat ain't doin' too well, bein' from a mostly cold place.

"I liked it much more here in winter when I first came." She tells me, sittin' in front of the air conditioner.

"Awww, it ain't that hot, Nat!" I say, givin' her a glass of ice tea anyway.

"I have to disagree." She says back, takin' the glass and sipping from it. She makes a face at the stuff. "What is this? It is so sweet it nearly gags me!"

"Ice tea?" I say, sippin' my own. It's good. One of my favorite things to drink on hot summer days since I was a kid.

"I am pretty sure you are not supposed to put this much sugar in your tea, J.G." She says, takin' another drink even with her complainin'.

"Well I like it like that." I tell her, and we both sit in front of the AC and watch the TV for a while.

"Hey, Nat?" I look over at her. We ain't got nothin' to do for the weddin' today, even though that's in a month, and we ain't got no other plans.

"What is it?" She looks back at me.

"Wanna go swimmin'? There's a good place fer it not far from here."

"I suppose anythink to get out of this heat." She says, gettin' up to go get her swimsuit.

I come back in my shorts and she's in her dark blue suit. Nat looks at me and snorts.

"You have a strange tan line." She says when I ask what is her problem.

"Yeah, and you ain't got one." I tell her, grinnin'. I got the tan line where it shows off how I'm wearin' a t-shirt all day in the sun. Work is good in the summer so I'm outside a lot. Plus, I found a stand of cottonpuff trees on my land right before the twister hit and have since been tryin' to market old-fashioned-picked Southern cotton. Nat ain't takin' to kindly to my showin' her how to pick the fluffy things and get the seeds out, so I do that on my own too.

Either way, we're headin' down the creek, 'til we get to a spot where there's a clear, quiet pool. I wish there was a rope swing to drop into the deepest part, but there ain't. I'm gonna fix that someday. I still run fast as I can towards the bank and jump with a whoop and make a big splash as I land. You ain't gotta be a kid to wanna shout and jump into a swimmin' hole on a hot July day.

Nat just laughs a bit and sorta starts to wade in, 'til I go under and grab her leg, makin' her fall the rest of the way in with a yelp.

"J.G.!" She cries out, laughin' as I come back up, grinnin'. I get splashed in the face fer trippin' her. Nat, it turns out, can't swim nearly as well as I can, but can do it good enough to survive. We both can float on our backs, though, so we do that, lookin' at the puffy clouds makin' their way across the light blue sky.

"Ain't this nice?" I ask her, and smilin', she agrees that yes, a cool creek on a hot day is real nice. Soon, we're messin' around again and I show her how to dive down and pick things up, and we do that fer a while, and then we end up sittin' on the bank, lettin' the hot sun dry us off.

"J.G., did you put on sunblock or do you not believe in that either?" Nat asks of me.

"I ain't never thought much about it." I say.

"You are goink to get burnt, and I am goink to tell you that you should put sunblock on." She says, with her lil' half-smile.

Sure enough, a couple hours after we come back from our swim, my back and shoulders start hurtin'. My face feels a bit burnin' and tight, too.

"Alright, Nat, you can laugh. How bad did I get burnt?" She sighs, but has the half-smile in on her face as she looks me over.

"You look like a blue-eyed lobster." she says.

"Ow." I say, as she pokes my back a bit.

"It will probably peel in day or two. Lucky for you, you will not blister." She says.

"And why ain't this healin'?" I ask.

"One flaw in our system is very minor injuries will not heal right away. Only if a cut is drippink with blood or you are burnt down to the bone will it go." She e'splains.

"Ow." I say again.

A day or so later, I notice my arm has lil' curls of the burnt skin comin' off on it. I look over at Nat, pickin' seeds from some cotton fluff I got earlier that day across the room.

"Hey, look," As she does, I start rubbin' my arm, makin' the bits of burnt skin come flakin' off, "My arm's a snowcloud!"

She sighs and then goes back to her pickin'. We're gonna be married in a month, now, and we're both kinda nervous. It's gonna be in the lil' church in town, and real traditional, 'cuz that's how I like things, and Nat says she always has wanted a classic-style weddin'. Then we're gonna go to her home country fer the honeymoon, which is excitin' since I ain't never been outside this country before.

I'm nervous, but also kinda excited, and I ain't sure which one is more powerful.


	32. Chapter 32

It's about five days before the weddin' now, and people are startin' to show up and crowd the lil' hotel in Allan. I got Alfred's family sleepin' in the livin' room and Nat's brother and sister in the guest room, which will be a kid's room when we got one. Arthur and France have teamed up to take me out to get a better suit then the ancient one I got. Arthur, 'cuz he says he knows somethin' about bein' well-dressed, bein' an English gentleman and all, and France 'cuz he don't trust Arthur's fashion choices.

"First of all," France says, lookin' Arthur's outfit over. He's wearin' a short-sleeve shirt 'cuz of the heat and a sweater-vest that's a green to go with his eyes and brown pants, "you dress like an old man."

"Most of all," Arthur says, "I don't dress like I'm going to an excentric fashion show!"

I just sigh at 'em both. They look over at me. I'm wearin' a t-shirt that's got the confederate battle flag on it and says "Southern Pride" over that and my ratty camo shorts, socks and my hikin' boots. It really is hot, otherwise I'd be wearin' my button-up shirts instead of t-shirts.

"Well, I think we all can agree on the fact we need to get you out of that thing." Arthur says.

"What thing?" I ask stupidly.

"That shirt is rather offensive. No wonder your neighbors don't like you."

"If you take offense at my e'spressin' my pride fer my country-" I start, gettin' a bit mad at him.

"J.G., shut up, please. You can't wear a t-shirt to a wedding anyway." France tells me.

"See, he's a'shally got a point, Artie!" I say. Arthur rolls his eyes.

"At any rate, what sort of clothing shops exist here?" he asks of me.

"I dunno... A couple'a years ago we got a Walmart in town, I guess." I say, scratchin' my head. France just sighs and shakes his head.

"Alright, later when we actually have my car, we'll take you to the big city and get you better clothes. For now, we need to teach you manners."

"I got fine manners." I say, "I was raised a gentleman, after all!" Arthur looks at me.

"You ought to stand up straight, then."

"Yessir." I say, then I do it.

"And don't stick your hands in your pockets like that." I pull 'em out and clasp 'em behind my back. "Hmm," Arthur says, lookin' at me "I suppose that will do."

Just then Skipper comes runnin' from behind the house, and with him comes an awful, sufffocatin' smell. We all put our hands over our noses and Arthur and France ask, "What's that?"

"Skipper you bad dog! Did you try'n git a skunk again?" I look down at the very guilty-lookin' coonhound sittin' at my feet.

"Dear God, why're you lettin' 'im stay out'ere?!" Arthur asks of me, still holdin' his nose.

"Ugh, I sink I'm going to be sick!" France says, takin' off into the house. I go reach into the area right by the door and grab the keys, stick my head in, shout that I'm goin' to get tomato juice, and am back out the door.

I got a new truck now. It's still red, as I like that color in a car, but the newest model that insurance money could buy. I drag Arthur towards the car. He don't protest.

"Alright, we gotta git some tomato juice and then give Skip a bath in it to git the smell off'a him." I tell him.

"Why tomato juice?" Arthur asks.

"'Cuz it works best to git the smell of a skunk outta things." I say.

"Right." Arthur says, sighin'. "Look out for the other truck, J.G." He tells me.

"I know what I'm doin'!" I say, swervin' off to the side. Arthur's quiet for a while, and then he kinda turns his head to one side as if he hears somethin' that I don't.

"Hush up." He tells the thing I can't see. "It isn't really his fault his dog is an idiot, after all!"

"Uh, what?" I ask. It seems like Arthur can't hear me right now as he don't respond. Then he looks over at me lookin' all confused and realizes that I can't see what he was talkin' to.

"Er, sorry..." Is all he says.

"You kin stop callin' me strange now." I say back. "I might not do stuff like you do, but I don't talk to myself."


	33. Chapter 33

Gilbert has shown up and says he's takin' me to whatever passes for a club in this town to celebrate my last days without a wife. France agrees, bein' Gilbert's best friend, and they also pull Antonio along. Arthur asks if he can come along, at least for a bit, and Gilbert rolls his eyes,

"Like we need a total lightweight like you dragging us down! _Nein,_ we're going to be out all night!"

"I don't see it as an issue if he wants to come." I say. I don't much wanna go myself and as such am eagerly gonna help start a fight that might de-rail the whole damn thing.

"_Ar-sur.._. if you want to drink, we can bring you back some whiskey." France says.

"You behave like that's the only reason I want to go!" Arthur says back.

"Am I wrong, _petit lapin?"_

"...Shut your bloody froggy mouth." He says, crossin' his arms. "And for the last time I'm not a _'pet-ie lap-on!'_"

"I got plenty of liquor here if that's all y'all wanna do is git drunk." I offer. Just then Al shows up to see the sit-ation.

"Hey, what are you guys doin'?" He asks.

"Takin' J.G. out for a fun night before he throws the rest of his immortal life away!" Gilbert replies. France and Arthur are lookin' to get physical with their fight in the background and Antonio is starin' out the front window at somethin'. It ain't exactly lookin' like we're gonna go anywhere anytime soon. I'm kinda pleased that my plan to start a fight so we didn't go worked.

"Looks like fun. Can I get in on this?" Al says anyway, grinnin' and showin' off his missin' tooth.

"_Ja,_ but aren't you underage?" Gilbert asks. I groan loudly.

"Gil, _I'm_ underage!"

"_Wirklich? _Really?" He says. "You act a lot older."

I just put my face in my hand and sigh. Al's smile gets wider as the chaos of Arthur and France continues.

"We're both underage kids that want to do drinking? Pfft, that's what fake ID is for!" Al says, grinnin' and holdin' up this card that says New York State on it. Looks normal, 'cept instead of him bein' born a proper time fer a 19-year-old it says a few years earlier. Still IDs him as_ Alphonse F. Jones, 5'9, 150 pounds, brown hair, red eyes_, though.

"Well I ain't got any fake IDs." I tell him. My South Carolina State ID has my proper dates on it. _Jason G. Jones, 5'9, 165 pounds, blond hair, blue eyes, born 12/20/82_. "Wait, yer birthday's the Fourth of July?" I ask him.

"Yep. American Independence Day! Why, is yours not?"

"It's December 20th. Same day as South Carolina seceded and started my country."

"Of course it is." He snorts. "Anyway, don't even act like you don't go to the bar sometimes!" I roll my eyes.

"Say, Antonio, what's with the camera?" I ask of him. Dunno where he got the thing, but anything to avoid the conversation.

"Oh, I like to take pictures." He says.

"What sorta pichers?" I ask.

"Stuff I like." He says.

"Such as...?"

"I like kids a lot, so I do cute pictures of them sometimes. I have a lot of pictures of the kids from Happy Tomato!" He says, smilin' at me. Somethin' about that, maybe the way he avoided tellin' me, makes me feel strange about Antonio and his pichers of children. On the other hand, ain't pedo-philes 'sposed to be creepy old men lustin' after lil' girls in school uniforms, 'stead of friendly Spanish daycare teachers? Yeah, I think so. Still, I find it unsettlin' and just kinda stop talkin' to him.

Eventually, we do manage to get ourselves out the door. Allan, bein' a mid-sized town has one adult club on the far west end. Gilbert, on hearin' this, tells me, the one drivin' to go there, 'cuz of course he does. I just sigh and make the turn anyway. Ain't like I can do anything about it, so I might as well try to have fun.

* * *

><p>"Hey, J.G., you havin' fun?" Gil shouts over the music that's real loud.<p>

"Yer damn sure I am!" I shout back, with the real pretty dancer girl still sittin' on my lap. It ain't proper, but that ain't in my head. What's in my head is how she won't quit movin' her hips just enough to be makin' me feel all hot and good.

"Hey, girl! How much to get my friend here a fun time?" Al asks, givin' a smirky grin at the girl over the rims of his red-tinted glasses.

"I'll have you know sir that I ain't a prost-o-tute, but if'n he wants'a come back to the back with me fer a lil' lapdancin', that I would oblige, fer 50." She says, smirkin' down at me. "Maybe 45, 'cuz he sure is a cutie!" She says, runnin' her finger down my chest. My face heats up and I feel real hot now, 'specially in my pants. Al looks like he's gonna take that offer, but a lil' bit of my common sense is still there, so I protest as he gits close with the money.

"Al you know I ain't had nearly 'nuff to be doin' stuff like that!" I say, swattin' at his hand. I don't move to make the girl git off, though. I ain't the only cutie in this bar, I think.

"Well here!" Al laughs, puttin' more money on the bar so's the girl fillin' the drinks puts 'nother one in his hand, which he brings to me. "This one seems pretty strong- mostly vodka! That'll probably be enough!"

It is strong, and burns my throat as I drink it down.

"Alrighty, I'll a'sept yer offer of the lapdancin' now, Miss!" I tell the girl still sittin' on me.

The rest of the night is mostly all blurry, but I do 'member gettin' into a fight with Gil over somethin', which didn't end good on my part, and Al grabbin' me and tellin' me somethin' 'bout how cute I am all beat up, but I don't know how I got home.

Fer that matter, I dunno how I got myself to the other end of the house, seein' as I could hardly stand straight. I kinda 'member tryin' to crawl into bed with Nat, and her askin',

"Jason, are you _drunk!?_" When I kissed her, or tried to, and then after my answerin',

"Just a lil' bit, sugar." and smilin' all drunkenly at her and tryin' to kiss her 'gain...

I kinda just passed out, I think.


	34. Chapter 34

I wake in the mornin' to my head poundin'. I'm alone in the bed and I can tell that I ain't wearin' pants. This is a lil' bit bad, since I also don't 'member hardly nothin' that happened last night. I can feel that I'm a lil' sore in a few places, like the place halfway up my thigh that's scarred up from bein' a soldier, and a couple lil' spots on my chest, and in my eye, like I was hit around some. That's more of a dull ache 'gainst the sledgehammer layin' tracks in my head. It's so bad I feel sick to my stomach a bit.

"Ugh." I say, turnin' my achy body over to get my face outta the light. My mouth don't taste too good inside neither, all dry and sour, and I can tell from the sticky and a lil' bit crusty patch on my arm that I was droolin' a bit. Gross. I must look a sight. I get up and go into the bathroom, as that's where the asprin is, and asprin is pain medicine. Now that I'm movin', I feel dizzy and slow, through all the pain, and the sick feelin' in my stomach gets worse.

I look at the lil' mirror and see how messed up my hair is, even more than my usual stickin' up bedhead look that Nat says is adorable. Wait. There's some kinda mark on my collarbone, just where it starts to meet my neck. I saw it as I started to peel off the shirt I'd been wearin' last night and then slept in. The Thing looks like a lil', kinda round, uneven bruise. Weird. Must'a hit myself on somethin'. Or maybe it's the Spanish Flu come to get me. I dunno. I resolve to ask one of the others whether or not they think I'm dyin'.

I wash my face, and the cold water feels powerful good, and helps me wake up a lil' better. Then I get into the shower, and that water makes me feel even better. I ain't got any more marks on me, save fer one more lil' one a bit higher up on my neck. It's a real strange pattern, I think, and my resolve to ask the others gets stronger. I get into a halfway clean shirt, shorts made by cuttin' the legs from old jeans, and head back across the house.

"Hey, Al?" I ask him. He's sittin' there along with the other three and Arthur at the table. Arthur's got an ice pack on his head and is glarin' murder at anything that happens to make sound, includin' me.

"What?" Al asks. I guess he's regrettin' that fake ID idea, as he ain't his usual smirky self, it seems.

"I got somethin' goin' on that I need someone to come look at, and since we're the same age, and you've known that yer a nation longer than me, I need you to come look." I say.

"Umm, okay?" He says, lookin' at me funny. He follows me anyway and his smirkin' returns as I start unbuttonin' my shirt.

"Wow, you know you could'a just said that you wanted _that!_" Al says, smirkin' real wide. I glare at him and stop undoin' my shirt halfway down.

"No, you perverted idiot. Lookit this." I point out one of the marks. "I dunno what it is and I'm scared I'm dyin' of somethin' awful like the Spanish Flu!"

Al snorts and tries to keep from laughin' fer a while. Then he looks back up at me, and does it again.

"Okay," He says, gettin' himself under control. "Okay. J.G... _That_ is a hickey."

"A what?" I ask stupidly. Al just sighs.

"It's a mark you get when someone bites you. Usually, y'know... sexually." I feel my face heatin' up.

"Al..."

"Yeah?"

"What exactly did I do last night?" I'm lookin' at my feet now, tryin' to remember.

"Well," Al starts, "from what I remember, we had a bet that the two of us who lost a standin' on one foot contest had to be locked in the back of the car for ten minutes... I think you might'a been one of the losers, to get bitten up like that!"

My face must be bright red at this point, 'cuz I feel like I'm about to explode from the embarrassment. I done it again. I let myself get possessed by the demon, and now I gotta repent or I'll be in trouble. I already am, and I guess the e'spression I got makes Al think I'm real sad about somethin' 'cuz he says,

"Hey, don't look so upset. Could be worse. At least you didn't actually sleep with anyone!"

I'm real lucky Nat either didn't notice or chose to ignore it. The marks fade in a couple days with my constant puttin' ice on 'em and the rubbin' of a cold spoon on 'em Arthur said would help.

So, life carries on as normal 'til the afternoon of August 14, 2002.


	35. Chapter 35

Today is the day, and I'm so excited and nervous and happy that I can't hardly stay still. France is fussin' over me on one side and Arthur on the other and I don't wanna have'ta sit there to take it, I really don't, but I do anyway.

"Now, Jason, we musn't mess with our tie." Arthur scolds me.

"But it's tight!" I complain as he puts it back into place.

"Jason!" He snaps, givin' it an extra pull.

"Ack! Yessir. Got it. Don't mess with the tie." I say. Arthur, sat-sfied with how I look at the moment, sits down next to me, smilin'.

"You know, when Alfred showed me those pictures of that little freckle-faced twelve-year-old playing in the river, I never thought I'd be seeing that same boy all grown up and getting married."

"Yeah well... When I was that little I never in a million years figured I'd turn out to be like I am and marryin' a Russian girl." I say, also smilin'.

Soon, we gotta start the thing. I always got told it was bad luck to see the bride before the ceremony, so I ain't seen Nat yet, and when I do, I 'member that day a long time ago, almost a year now, when I saw her at the UN conference and told Alfred I'd change her mind about marryin' her brother...

She's so pretty, with the white dress fitted just right so it hangs nicely, her just-washed-and-dried silver-blond hair all straight and perfect in exactly the style it's meant to be, and she insisted on wearin' her dark blue bow, which I learned she's had since she was a kid and was one of the only things to survive the twister and...

I feel plain in my suit with my too-tight tie and narrow shoes. I don't look graceful or exotic like Nat does. I'm just one very lucky farmboy who survived war and demon possession to make it here. As I get up to Nat, she smiles and murmurs to me,

"Never have I seen a more handsome Am-err-i-ken."

"Aww..." I say, lookin' down, blushin' and scuffin' my foot a bit. After the preacher talks for a bit, which I ain't payin' much attention to in favor of lookin' at Nat and how pretty she is, it gets to the part of,

"Do you, Jason G. Jones, take Natasha Arlovskaya-Braginski to be your lawfully wedded wife, in sickness and in health, as long as the both of you live on God's green earth?"

I look deep into Nat's beautiful blue-green eyes as I say, "I do."

"And do you, Natasha Arlovskaya-Braginski take Jason G. Jones to be your lawfully wedded husband, in sickness and in health, as long as the both of you live on God's green earth?"

"I do." She says, lookin' into my kinda plain pale blue eyes.

"Then by the power vested in me and in the name of Jesus Christ, I pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride."

And I do, I really, really do.

Is Nat cryin' as we pull apart? I think she is. I ain't never been so happy, and even if I ain't gonna cry, I know there's somethin' makin' a lump in my throat that makes my eyes tear up as I lookit Nat, thinkin,_ Looky here, Sarah, Joey, Missy... I got me a fine girl... Yer lil' J.G.'s got a wife!_

* * *

><p>After the reception, in which I get congrad-u-lated a million times by my neighbors and the nations alike, Nat and I are headin' back to the house fer a bit of sleep before our flight the next mornin'. Sure, we did take a moment to remember those that left us before this could happen, like neighbor-girl Jenny, who got hurt real bad in the twister and still ain't woke up, and I 'membered Sarah and Missy and Joey and... well maybe a lil' bit of <em>him<em>, 'cuz we was friends after all, but mostly, it's a happy, happy day.

We ain't thinkin' of sleep when we get into the bedroom and Nat grabs me and kisses me deep. I push her on the bed and start helpin' her outta her dress, 'cuz it's right and proper now, and she stops me for a moment and does her lil' half-smile,

"J.G., do you believe in a condom or are we just goink to have million kids?"

"Don't be silly, Nat, you cain't get pregnant on the first time!"

"It is not my first." She says, smirkin' at me still.

"Well it is mine, so yer okay." I tell her, smilin' and kissin' her again.

I ain't gonna describe what we did, 'cuz it really, _really_ ain't proper to talk about, but it felt real good, like nothin' I ever felt durin' the Time of Possession at school. That's how I know that was just a demon, is I felt better with a woman than with another boy. I'm tired out and Nat is too, so we don't even get back dressed all the way before she kinda snuggles on my chest and pulls the bedsheet over both of us.

So, we sleep to get up and get on the plane to Minsk, which is the capital of Nat's homeland.


	36. Chapter 36

_**A/N: For the record, simple words that J.G. would have heard before and knows are written in their original script. Everything else is written phonetically, as if he does not understand it, J.G. would not know the script. :3**_

* * *

><p>I ain't never been on a flight longer'n two and a half hours, and there's a lotta security things we gotta go through. We got to the International airport at New York from Colombia, and I'm gonna go buy some food, at least, until Nat grabs me by my arm.<p>

"We are almost first in line. You can eat after we get tickets." She says. I start to walk away again, sayin',

"You cain't tell me what to do."

She grabs my arm again and holds on this time.

"I will not lose place in line just because you want greasy overpriced garbage to shove into your hole. You can eat after we get tickets." She says, and I can tell she means it. One thing about Nat is she ain't good at wakin' up, and when she's tired, she ain't to be messed with. 'Nother thing is how she always means what she says no matter what when she says that tone. Women, I swear. Even thinkin' that, I still just stand where I am and cross my arms.

"If I pass out 'cuz I ain't got nothin' to eat, 's yer fault."

She sighs. "I think I can handle guilt of that."

Soon, we're at the front of the line and bein' searched as is the new policy for gettin' on planes after 2001. The security man starts with wavin' this wand thing over me and when it beeps he asks me to put all my metal stuff in this tray, includin' change and stuff. I got a handful of silver coins, my knife, which he asks fer a permit for and I show, and the metal buckle on my belt, which I got as a sorta present from France ("so you can stop wearing those horrid suspenders"). Nat's got her knife and permit too, and some change, and the housekeys, which I'm glad she got 'cuz I fergot to grab 'em, and then we're bein' put through to the rest of the flight.

We're soon on the plane and the stewardess comes and asks us if we'll have refreshments.

"Got any ice tea, Miss?" I ask.

"Of course, sir. Sweet, lemon or plain?" She says, smilin' at me and Nat holdin' hands there.

"Sweet, 'o course." I say.

"Alright, anything else?" The stewardess asks of us.

"Water, and maybe some of your macaroni and cheese meal for us each. We have not had breakfast." Nat tells the lady who writes it down.

"Mmm, mac 'n cheese." I say. "Got any fried chicken to go with that?"

"Alas, no, sir. We do however serve a meat dish for dinner around five." She says, smilin' at me still. I think she's gotta smile or she'll lose her job. Or she just finds me real pleasant to talk to. That done, she goes off to fetch our food.

"J.G.," Nat starts, and I look over, "for someone who likes so much to make fun of stereotype, you really are one yourself."

"Is this about that one time I said that thing to that one guy? I told you I'm pretty sure that I-talian is in the mob, the way he was lookin' at me!" I say, lookin' back to the handheld game I got in my hands.

"If Feliciano is indeed in the mob, even then he cannot possibly harm you." Nat says, goin' back to her book. It's a simple one, in English, 'cuz she wants to learn better. She's got some Russian ones in her bag.

Soon, we get the food, and Nat tells me to be civilized in my eatin' so's to not be emberassin'. I can do it just fine, since I did go to a school for teachin' boys how to be gentlemen. I gently pick up the plastic fork and gently scoop some of the gooey stuff onto it and gently put it in my mouth, and gently chew it up. It ain't half-bad for yankee airplane food. Nat, who had been watchin' my gentle-ness with the plate just sighs.

"I said don't make a mess and use manners, not 'eat like you are making love to it.'"

I was (gently) sippin' my ice tea as she said that and I just start laughin' at the image of someone havin' a romantic night with a plate of mac n' cheese and end up snortin' ice tea in my nose and coughin'. Nat sighs again and whacks me on the back and then uses her napkin to wipe my face off.

"Honestly, J.G., you are like child sometimes."

"Yer the one that made me laugh!" I say back to that. Nat just sighs and does her half-smile thing.

Eventually even my video game is boring, and it's still a few hours 'til we hit Moscow, where we get the flight to Minsk. I try lookin' out the window and there's nothin' but water and sky. I find that a bit startlin' havin' never been to the ocean before. I don't do much. I'm mostly happy with things the way they are.

"Nat, lookit! You cain't even see the land anymore!" I say, pointin'.

"That is right. You have never been across water before, have you?" She asks.

"Nope. I ain't never left the US." I tell her.

"Well, once you are done there, there is a movie you may watch if you like. It is Spider-Man, somethink an overly excited Am-err-i-ken might enjoy more than me." She offers me the headset.

So, I entertain myself fer a while longer. Sittin' still has never been my thing, ever. Even on the plantation I used to swing my legs one in front of the other when I was made to sit in one place and I'd fidget terribly at my desk at school, which always ended in a ruler's hard sting on the back of my hand. But now I'm an adult who can sit still fer a while and I do it and as per Nat's request so we ain't jet-lagged when we get there, we go to sleep a bit after supper. Nat don't understand why I say supper instead of dinner, but she don't really understand a lotta things I say. So, with our seats back and her wearin' a mask over her eyes to block the light, we go on to Minsk.

* * *

><p>We're landed in Moscow now and it's real scary, I think, when yer stomach lurches right as the plane goes up or down. Moscow is cloudy and a lil' bit chilly and I can't read any of the signs 'cuz they're all in Russian. I stand in line fer a while to get somethin' to eat and maybe drink, since I ain't had anything since supper four hours ago, and when I get to the front the man looks at me and asks,<p>

"_schtorbobohi-nonyet, sir?_"

"What?" I say.

"_Soshana-prrosh-memnezeleh, shto?_ What you buy? Eat. Food. Drink?" He says. I see a picher of some good-lookin' meat-on-a-stick up there so I point it out, sayin,

"That there thing, please. And sweet tea."

"Chicken stick and the cold tea? Okay. 203 ruble." He says, settin' the thing in front of me.

"I only got dollars." I say.

"That good. You give. Five."

I'm about to hand him the money when Nat comes over, and grabs my arm. "J.G., stop! He is tryink to cheat you. Ruble is worth only half a dollar right now. You owe this _ogah-nogava_ only three dollars."

I ain't got the slightest idea of what a "_ogah-nogava_" is, but it makes the store owner mad and he starts yellin' in Russian at her and she starts shoutin' back and I just take my cup and my tray of chicken sticks and leave the money on the counter before walkin' away from it. Soon, Nat joins me and slaps the money down on the table in front of me.

"I made him give it to you for free and apologize for tryink to take advantage of an ignorant tourist."

It might be because she still looks pretty ticked off, or because my mouth is full of chicken, but I don't fight her on it. This one time, I'll let my greedy nature get the better of me. It ain't a bad thing for them that deserve it to lose money, after all.

* * *

><p>The flight to Minsk is a lil' bit less long, and soon, after a whole day of travel, we're unpackin' in the room of the leader's house. Nat stays here when she's on business and she got the government here to pay our travel costs by sayin' she'd do some nation-stuff as well as have fun with me, and ain't it okay fer a girl to bring her husband to visit her country?<p>

The bed's got a nice, smooth dark green comforter with silky dark red sheets and pillowcovers. The room itself is kinda plain-lookin', but that's alright as Nat ain't ever here anymore. I set the beat-up suitcase down and look at Nat. She's unpackin'. I do the same, and she just sighs at some of the clothes I got.

"J.G., you are lucky nobody here cares for Am-err-i-ken politics or you might be shot for those clothes. I do not know how you haven't been."

"What'dya mean?" I say, lookin' at her in real confusion.

"Even I know that the symbol- the one with the blue X and the stars, is offensive to Am-err-i-kens." She says.

"It ain't offensive, I'm just showin' my pride fer my poor lost nation!" I say back.

"Your 'poor lost nation' was built on the backs of those you deemed as below you." She says, rasin' her eyebrow.

"Well... Maybe it was, but that don't mean I ain't allowed to be proud of the fight we put up fer our rights." I say, smilin' at her. Nat and I get into arguments like this a lot. She thinks my showin' of my country's flag is just as bad as if people in hers showed the communist hammer and sickle. I always just tell her that we Southerners sure ain't communists, so it ain't the same at all. She just sighs at that every single time. Just now, she does it again.

"J.G., I love you, but you say stupidest things sometimes."

"I ain't stupid. Just proud." I tell her.

"Whatever. I am exhausted after long flight. Want to go to bed?" She asks.

"Yeah, I'm tired too." I agree.

So, under the silky sheets of the bed in Minsk, we sleep, ready to do tourist things.

* * *

><p>We're goin' to the Minsk Zoo, 'cuz back when I was in New York we didn't get to go, and I still wanna see a zoo. I'm the first one up, and I'm gonna find the bathroom all on my own, 'cuz ain't I a strong independent Southern man?<p>

First, I look down the hallway of closed doors. I don't wanna get in trouble for openin' up doors I ain't s'posed to be in, so I give up on the findin' it on my own thing. Then I ask a passin' maid girl if she knows.

"_yemay-gula-oop-almgleskay._" She says. I look at her blankly. I wish more people knew English. It's real bad. How else am I to communicate with people and learn other culture if they don't speak my language?

"Bath-room! The shower? That place?" I say, as she looks more and more confused. Then Nat shows up and looks to me, then to the scared girl, then says somethin' in Russian and the girl nods.

"_Tahm._" she says, pointin' at a door.

"Thanks, I guess." I tell her, headin' that way. I swear I would'a gotten it eventually if Nat had let me keep tryin'. I swear it.

* * *

><p>We're at the Minsk Zoo now, and I'm as excited as any lil' kid. It's kinda chilly, I think, so I'm wearin' a jacket. Nat ain't, sayin' it's summer, so it's warm. It was warm back in Allan. It ain't warm here. It's like winter in Allan here. Freezin'.<p>

I let Nat buy the tickets and everything because she's the one who can speak Russian. There's a lil' kid yellin' at his mom in the language and playin' with a balloon. Childish as it is, I'm thinkin', I wanna balloon...

"Alright, J.G., we have our tickets now. We go here. This word means 'Entry' in English I believe." Nat says, pointin' out the green sign with a bunch of letters I don't know on it.

"Why ain't anything in English?" I ask.

"Because we are in Belarus and not America." She says like I oughta know it already.

"Yeah, but don't they know they got tourists from America?"

"They do. But in a nation, the signs are goink to be written in the language of the nation. You would not expect to see Spanish signs in America because Am-err-i-ken speak English. In Belarus, we speak Russian. It would seem silly to have English signs." She explains as if I'm a lil' kid she's bein' real slow and patient with.

"I still think you oughta write 'em in English. They'll learn." I say to that.

"I suppose one thing people can say of you is you are stubborn about your opinion." She says to that, "Even when that opinion has just been proved wrong."

With that, we walk off towards the gate.

* * *

><p>"J.G., it is only a lion." Nat says, sighin' at me as I get up on the first rail of the fence to see closer like any child.<p>

"But I ain't never seen nothin' like it!" I say. "Only pichers!"

"And you like to brag about how you are a mature adult." She says, doin' her half-smile.

It's been like this since we got to the zoo. I get excited about everything, and Nat just follows along. I bet she's been to this zoo a million times. Well I ain't, and I'm havin' fun, so she's gonna deal with it. So, we see lions and tigers and monkeys and everything. We even go to the pettin' zoo, which is really just fer lil' kids, but I don't care, and bein' a farmboy, it feels nice to get to pet the goats and pigs. Feels like home.

Soon, we're goin' to the Belarus Grand Cafe, which is a fancy restaurant. It means I gotta dress up in that stupid-lookin' suit again, but I do it, and Nat wears a really nice silky-lookin' dress and we sit down in the seats with the fancy white tablecloth. Nat knows I can't read Russian, so she reads the menu to me, pointin' out stuff I might like. It's mostly I-talian food, but that's alright by me. I ain't never been a picky one.

I get some stuffed pastas and Nat orders some champagne, and they don't even card us. I ask her what's up with that, and she laughs and tells me that the legal drinkin' age here is only 18, 'stead of 21. I think that's pretty strange, but what else can you 'spect from a country that don't speak English?

I'm way outta place here, in this fancy Russian restaurant, a lil' farmboy who's too far from home. I smile at the waiter-girl when she sets down the plate of food, but I dunno 'thank you, miss' in Russian. I ask Nat, 'cuz I'm gonna say it a lot.

"_spah-see-bah, mees._ Is how you pronounce it." She says, sayin' the words slow so I can do it.

"spuh-see-bah, miss." I repeat. "Spuhseebah."

"You have a very obvious accent, but it will do." Nat says, in what I think she means to be a helpful way.

The waitress soon comes to give us our drinks, and I take the opportunity to say, "Spahseebah, miss." She giggles a bit and looks at Nat.

"_Am-err-i-kanyess._" She says simply. The waitress smiles at me and it makes me feel like she's pityin' me 'cuz I can't talk like her. I don't like it, and so I just nod at her.

Minsk is fun, but I ain't overly sad to be headin' home, when our week-long honeymoon vacation is over. I always did like to stay at home more than travel.


	37. Chapter 37

I been married a few months now, and Nat is sick. I can tell 'cuz she'll smell somethin' and go pale and take off into the bathroom to throw up. It started about a month after we got married, all this sickness. I dunno what's wrong, so mostly I just keep out of her way. All this bein' sick's put her in a sour mood most of the time, too, after all. I also stay outta her way 'cuz whatever it is, I don't wanna catch it.

"J.G. Jones, can't I trust you to be pickink up your own laundry!?" She snaps at me one day. I look lazily over the back of the couch to see her glarin' at me.

"I did too pick it up. Stuck it in the washer machine too." I tell her.

"Then why is your underwvear all over the bedroom carpet?" She asks with that tone in her voice that's only used when someone's real ticked off at you.

"It ain't all over. It's one pair that I was wearin' to bed." I tell her. Maybe if I act calm it'll help. She's been lookin' kinda... well, maybe it's what she's been eatin', but she looks kinda fatter, 'specially around her stomach. Strange, since people who're as sick as her usually lose weight. She's still yellin' at me, though.

"Am I the only one to do anythink around the house? I thought..." Her voice starts to break, like she's gonna cry, "I thought when I married you it was because you love me, not because you need maid..."

Well _that_ makes me get up and rush over there in a second. She's been doin' that a lot too. She'll go from happy and laughin' to bein' mopey and sad or even angry with me. Women are strange, changin' their emotions like TV channels and all.

"Nat, no! You know I love you a lot, Nat... Hey, don't cry. Here, c'mere. Now lemme hold you fer a bit, 'til you stop the cryin'..." I sigh a bit as she holds onto me tight. "Maybe all the sickness is gettin' to you. You gotta go to a hospital, even, maybe."

"I-I..." She starts, then sniffles, "I think I know what is the matter. You have to trust me on it, though."

"Alright, alright, I will. Just please stop cryin'... whatever it is, it ain't worth all that." I tell her, helpin' her to the couch.

* * *

><p>That's how I ended up in this store, lookin' at my feet, with the Thing Only Meant For Girls in my hand. It ain't even the Thing Nat usually makes me go get, with the blue and pink box with "Always Comfort" written on it in frilly letters and a picher of a flower. This Thing is in a plainer white box with black letters I ain't bothered to read. 'Cept for what it is. Nat wanted me to go get a test to see if she's pregnant. I told her a million times she can't be 'cuz of a lotta reasons, but she wants to do it anyway.<p>

So, bein' a good husband and gentleman, here I am in the Allan General Merchandise Shop with this Thing in my hands. Mrs. Wenns, the old woman who owns the store with her husband, looks at the Thing I set down and smiles. She knows everyone who's lived in Allan their whole lives. The fact that I ain't got any older in the time she's known me don't seem to bother her overmuch.

"You and your wife are expecting already, eh, J.G.?" She says, typin' the price into the register.

"I s'pose so, ma'am." I say. That makes her smile more.

"Even when you're flustered like this you always have been such a polite boy. I'm sure yer kids'll have the same qualities."

"Thank'y, ma'am." I say, handin' her the money and lettin' her put it in the unmarked bag.

"Y'all take care now, and do tell me when Nat's havin' the baby when ya know, alright?"

"Yes'm. You take care 's well." I say as I leave. I'm real glad the store puts things in bags, I really am.

* * *

><p>"J.G., no matter the result you must promise to not freak out, alright?" Nat says. She ain't looked at the test and I ain't neither, so we're both gonna look together.<p>

"I ain't gonna freak out, Nat." I tell her for the fifth time.

"Alright. Package says 'a plus means pregnant' and 'a line means not.' Ready?" She says for the sixth time.

"Nat, I been ready since I got back from the store." I'm really nervous and about to scream, but I'm gonna act calm so she acts calm.

She pulls the thing outta the box she put it into so we could both see together. There's a faint but easy to notice mark that's a "+" on both the lil' circles.

"J.G..." Nat says, lookin' at it with the joy plain in her eyes. "J.G... we're havink a baby."


	38. Chapter 38

Well, knowin' that we're havin' a baby makes our first Christmas the best. Nat is of the opinion that we should go to her family's house for the holiday, but I remind her that we ain't got money for that.

"Your family, then?" She asks.

"I ain't got no family, 'cept I guess Alfred." I say.

"We shall go to see Alfred, then." She says.

"Aww... But ain't he overseas?"

"I heard he came back for the holidays. Nation have fairly flexible lives and can usually get what we want from our governments."

"Why do we gotta go see anyone?" I ask.

"Because we did not travel for your Thanksgivink and so we will travel for Christmas." she says.

Right now it's really best to just let Nat do what she wants. So I call Alfred on the lil' wireless phone that only has to go back to its spot on the wall to charge the batteries and has his number saved in it.

"Hey, J.G.!" Alfred says.

"How'd you know it was me?"

"Duh, caller ID! Pretty neat, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess so. Nat wants to go somewhere fer Christmas, and we ain't got money to travel very far, and y'all ain't too far, I think, so kin we go over there?"

"Sure, dude! I'll ask England right now!" I can hear his muffled voice askin', then Arthur's reply, and then a whine,_ Iggyyyyyy it's Christmaaaas!_ and then a tired-soundin' reply and then Alfred's back. "Yep, you guys can totally come here! As long as you can get up here on your own."

"I got a car, and three or four states ain't that much." I assure him.

"Alright. seeya then!"

"Bye, Alfred."

* * *

><p>Nat's asleep next to me and I down the rest of the coffee. I bet this is how bigrig drivers do it, too. I'm tryin' to get to Alfred's family's place without havin' to stop at a hotel anywhere, 'cuz I ain't got no money. It's goin' well, 'cuz we're in West Virginia now, which means about halfway. I switch on the radio to entertain myself.<p>

_"Oh there's no place like home for the holidays_

_For no matter how far away you roam_

_when you pine for the sunshine of a friendly gaze_

_for the holidays you can't beat home sweet hoooome."_

Kinda reminds me of the Christmases back when I was a kid. There was no work done on Christmas, Mister Fredrickson always gave his slaves that. All the kids, includin' me would be in a pile, and wake up when we felt like it, with no overseer wavin' a lash in our- their faces. I gotta distance myself from that life. It ain't natural, for a black woman to have brought up a white boy, and I gotta not let it show.

Christmas at school was nice, too. We didn't have classes, and the boys that didn't go home, mostly me and a couple youngers, always got a nice new pair of shoes or drawers or somethin' from the staff, as well as whatever you got from bein' a teacher's favorite. Some of the boys from the frontier of Montana, where it got real cold in winter taught us how to make molasses candy whenever the water troughs froze over enough. We'd take the syrupy stuff and put it in a bowl and put an oilcloth tight over it and then dunk it in the icy water for a while, and then eat the sweet hard cakes of candy 'til we were sick to our stomachs.

One time I left the school for a holiday. With _him._ But I ain't gonna think about that. Instead, I drive. Through West Virginia and Maryland and Pennsylvania. There's snow on the roads now, which makes me nervous, but that's alright. I got a four-wheel drive.

At least, that's what I'm thinkin' as I start to loose my wakefullness. It's just snow... I'll be alright... I snap awake as the truck jerks. I slam on the brakes to make it stop but it don't. It skids and the tires screech as we go in a circle and off the edge of the road and I hear Nat scream and then I realize we're goin' into the cold river in the middle of the night and thank God it ain't that deep, but the car smashes on its roof and I hear Nat's cry cut short by a loud pop from somethin' in her body breakin' and then I'm out too, with the last thing I know bein' cold water mixin' with warm on my face and pain all through my arm and shoulder...


	39. Chapter 39

I wake up in pain, feelin' that I can't breath... cold in my face..._ can't breathe._.. Arms pull me outta the wrecked car, and a voice is askin' me my name, over and over, slow and calm,

"Sir, tell me who you are. What is your name?"

"Jay..." I start, then cough, hard and rough, feelin' water come from my chest, "J.G." I finally get out.

"What is your last name?"

"Jones. J.G. Jones." I say, gainin' more awareness as he drags me to the riverbank.

"What year is it?"

"2002." I answer. "Where's Nat?"

"Who?"

"My wife, Nat? Oh God... The baby!" I try to get out of his grip. I gotta go get Nat, I gotta save her and the baby, I gotta...

"J.G., please stay down. You were in the accident too, you know. We have your wife. I'm sure the baby is fine." He says. I just go limp and let myself be dragged. He's sayin' it like he's bein' polite, but his tone says I better listen or else.

He talks into his radio: "I have an approximately 20-year-old male with several broken bones and possible concussion." The radio buzzes in reply.

"We're sending an ambulance your way right now, roger."

"Roger." He agrees. I look up, finally, and through my wet stringy hair I can see a dark blue uniform with a badge sayin' PHPD and a dark face lookin' at me. I cough again.

"Nat..." I mumble.

"It's alright, J.G." Policeman says, "My partner is pulling her out right now. You two are lucky you went over right by our patrol. We were down here as soon as we could be- probably about ten minutes."

"The baby, she gon' be okay?" I ask.

"You know it's a girl?" He asks, to get my mind off of it, probably.

"I dunno... Always did want a daughter." I say. "I gotta call Alfred."

"Who's Alfred?"

"The one we was drivin' to see. We're s'pose' be spendin' Chris'mas at his house." Words are hard to make right now, with my vision kinda still really blurry and my brain foggy. "Nat... Gotta make sure she'sssokay..." I manage to get out. Policeman gets me to some cardboards he put in the snow and lays me down on one. It's real cold now, but I'm kinda goin' numb all over and can't feel it too much.

"You stay here and I'll help my partner get her over, alright?"

"Yesssirrr..." I say. I can't stop the slurrin' words together. They blend up in my mind with the fog and make it real hard to make sense. Thinkin's hard, too. with the fog in my brain and the pain in my leg and side and arm. I ain't been this badly hurt in a long time. Then, I look slowly over next to me and see Nat, blood drippin' on her face, set next to me. The bump in her stomach that's the baby's home is still there, thank God. We might be hurt real bad, but we're alive and the baby ain't hurt at all, and I shut my eyes and think real hard, _Thank you, Lord..._

* * *

><p>I must've fallen asleep, as I wake with a jolt, rememberin' what happened. There's sirens all around now, so I open my eyes slowly. Things don't focus in at all, hardly, but one thing that does show up is the face of an Asian girl wearin' a paramedic cap and askin' me my name.<p>

"J.G. Jonesss..." I get out.

"How old are you?"

"N'nteen."

"Count to ten for me, please."

"One... two... threee... fffourr... five... sssix'even... eigh'n'ine... ten." I say. It's so hard to make my mouth say what my brain wants. My brain don't really know what it wants at this point anyway.

"Good. Your wife is not awake yet. Can you tell me what her name is?"

"Nat... Natasha." I say. "She'same age's I am."

"Alright. Do you know what happened?" A mask is put on my face. It smells like plastic and I can feel the cold air in my mouth and nose.

"'M hot..." I say, startin' to try and undo my jacket.

"No, J.G., you aren't hot. You're too cold. Keep that on and don't move your arm." To make her point, pain stabs through my arm.

"Ow." I say. "Ssleepy..."

"Don't go to sleep, J.G., or you won't wake up. How would you like to leave your wife and baby all alone?"

"Ain't gon' sleep." I mumble to myself. "Gotta stay 'wake up."

"That's right," she agrees. "Now, can you tell me if you know what happened?"

"Crashed. We went over th' brish, 'n Nat's neck's broke n' my head hurts 'n we ain't gon' make it to Alfre's..."

"I'm sure Alfred will understand. Now don't go to sleep, alright?"

"Ain't gon' sleep." I agree. "Gon' stay 'wake, fer Nat 'n th' baby..."

* * *

><p>I did pass out on the ride, which I think about scared the paramedic girl to death. She started shakin' me and I had to try and in my slurrin' way tell her that I'd been awake since five in the mornin' the other day and I honestly was tired, not even hot no more, just sleepy. I woke up in a hospital bed with Nat in one next to me and a whole bunch'a beepin' machines all around us.<p>

The machines weren't so scary, as of course they're gonna make machines to see if we're alive. The scariest part for me was the tube they jabbed into the back of my hand. I dunno how they did that, but soon as I saw it I couldn't even help myself and screamed. That brought a nurse over in a hurry, and she reassured me that it wasn't gonna hurt me to have a tube stuck through my hand.

"It's only an IV, so you got enough fluids while you were asleep and couldn't drink any." She tells me, as if she were explainin' to a child. It's really what I need right now, and I just nod. One of my arms is in a hard cast, and there's stiff bandages wound around my chest and belly, and another cast on my leg up to my hip. I ain't in much pain, though, so that's good. I feel kinda slow still, now that the rush of wakin' up to a tube in my hand's gone. I think it must be the pain medicine they must've gave me for my leg and arm.

"Your arm is broken at the middle and the wrist, and your leg bone snapped clean in half about halfway up and was dislocated at the hip. You also fractured three ribs. I don't know how you aren't dead, honestly."

I guess car crashes count as self-inflicted, 'cuz I sure ain't healin' and neither is Nat. I look at the nurse expectantly.

"Your wife has a broken neck, about five stitches in her cheek, and a broken arm. We checked, and her baby, although a bit distressed, is going to be alright."

I sigh in relief and the nurse leaves. I look back over at Nat. She's woken up now, and is lookin' over at me from her bed.

"Sorry, Nat... I thought I could drive in the snow fine." I say.

"I do not blame you." She says, puttin' her good hand on her stomach. "I'm just glad the little one is okay."

The nurse comes back in and smiles at us. "Good, you're both awake. Someone calling himself Alfred is here asking to see you two. Is that alright?"

"Yes ma'am." I say, lookin' at Nat, who nods. She's got her neck in a bulky brace, I notice, and a cast on her arm and a gauze patch taped to her cheek. It's a miracle she ain't paralyzed, I think.

"Alright, I'll send him in."

Alfred comes in and looks at us both there in our casts and bandages and just sighs.

"Guys, I didn't know the roads were so bad or I would'a come and got you, but the government doesn't like it when I use airplanes for no reason..."

"It's alright... I've had worse. I got my whole leg taken off once." I say.

"He is right, Alfred. We will be fine." Nat agrees.

"They said you guys can go home as soon as you're both awake and alert. I'll get 'em to discharge you now." Alfred says, sighin'.

So, in that way, we finally get to Alfred's family's house in the suburban part of New York.


	40. Chapter 40

"How on _earth_ could you ever think slamming on the brakes in the ice is a good idea?! Do you have _any_ idea how physics work? You could have both _died_!"

"Nice to see you too, Arthur." I say to him.

"Honestly, all you bloody Americans are the same." Arthur says, huffing and sitting on the dark green couch.

"What else am I 'sposed to do when the car's slidin'?" I ask.

"You steer into the slide and pump the brakes, idiot. Slamming on them will only make you spin out. I don't even drive and I know this!"

"How'm I 'sposed to've known that? I ain't never driven in ice that bad before!" I look at Arthur with agitation and Arthur looks back at me with the same look and then Nat breaks the silence between us.

"Well, the point is, we are here, and my neck has healed on the ride, and our baby is alright too." France looks over at us, startled.

"You're having a baby? Already?" He asks.

"Well... yeah." I say. "Is that strange, t'have a kid right away?"

"Ar-sur and I were together for two years before we had Alfred and Matheiu." He says. I make a disgusted face.

"Well maybe that's just the way them that ain't followin' nature's laws do things." I say.

"Alright, before J.G. says anythink else offensive, why don't you show us where to put our baggage." Nat interrupts again. France just seems to take that, and lookin' at me like I'm some sorta spot of dirt, he says,

"Matheiu, show them the guest room, _sill-voo-playr._"

Matthew was standin' behind the couch the whole time, and I didn't even notice him. He's real quiet, that kid. He says, "Yes, Papa," and turns to me and Nat, motions us up the stairs, which is hard on me and my leg that I can't bend, and into this nicely made-up room where we set our bags.

"So, Matthew," I start. He looks over at me. "No one told me Arthur and France were..."

"Well, they're kind of off and on," He starts, and then sees my expression, "but that's not what you're worried about. Nations are kind of programmed to be attracted to both sides. Most of us have preferences, but some, like Papa, don't care as long as someone's pretty and pleasant to be around."

"Disgustin' and un-natural." I say.

"J.G., exactly how natural do you think a nation's existence is?" Nat asks, doin' her eyebrow-raise.

"Shut the Hell yer mouth." I tell her. "I might be an un-natural creature, but at least I got some decency."

Matthew sighs. "I don't think decency and who you're attracted to are one-and-one."

"Far as I been told they are." I say, crossin' my arms, "And I ain't gonna let my kid be around that. Soon as we're better we're goin' home." It's Nat's turn to sigh now as she makes me sit on the edge of the bed.

"If that is your concern, I can assure you that the baby cannot see or hear anythink unpure yet. It is only three months."

"Yeah, but..." I start, but Nat's hard look makes me stop. "Alright, we'll stay. I don't like it, but we'll stay."

And so, we stay.

* * *

><p>Francis, -which is France's name- and Arthur, as un-natural in relations as they are, aren't bad people, and soon I'm helpin' Francis in the kitchen 'cuz he heard Nat say I could cook and he wants me, along with Oliver, to help.<p>

"So, why ain't Arthur in here helpin'?" I ask, scrapin' the peeler over the potatoes to make 'em show their insides. Oliver starts gigglin' and Francis just shakes his head.

"_Ar-sur_ would burn the house down, if I let him in here."

"Why can't he just do simple things like potatoes and carrots and cuttin' 'em up?" Even the clumsiest at Big Farm had something to do, and if a one-legged Negro boy can learn to stack wood and haul water than surely a full-grown nation can learn to peel potatoes. 'Least, that's the sorta thing Mister always used to say.

"Because," Oliver starts, "Artie just can't do anything in the kitchen. He's really hopeless at it, and as for cutting things, most people don't really fancy blood and fingers in their veggies." He quickly starts choppin' the carrot in his hands, almost scarily quick.

"Careful you don't git yer hand." I tell him.

"I'm alright." He assures me. Then he gets the knife lodged in his finger.

"Oh my God!" I yell.

"_Mon deiu_! Oliver, are you okay?!" Francis asks. Oliver looks calmly at the cut that's gushing blood all over the counter.

"What a pity to ruin such a nice countertop." He says.

I don't help out in the kitchen no more after that. Oliver really, really gives me the creeps.

* * *

><p>"Who are you?" The boy looks up at me. He's got real thick, dark eyebrows like Arthur, so I know they're probably related.<p>

"Call me Mr. Jones." I tell him.

"Haven't you got a first name, though?" He's got the same limey accent as Arthur too. Bet this kid is Alfred and Matthew's younger brother or something.

"Yes, but it ain't polite fer a lil' boy to call an adult by his first name. Didn't yer ma teach you manners?"

"I never had a mum or dad. I grew up on an old military barge that's made itself its' own country!" He looks real proud here, "And when I get bigger, my country will take over all the others, especially stupid jerk England!"

"Hm, izzat right?" I say, not really listening.

"Also, so you know who to call when you want an ally, my name's Peter."

"Well, Peter, I don't know much about bein' a nation, but doesn't bein' as little as you are make your nation real small as well?" I ask him.

"Well, yes, we aren't very big yet, but someday I'll be the biggest nation in the world! Will you ally with me, Mr. Jones?"

"I ain't a whole nation myself, technically." I tell him.

"Well," the kid keeps on, "what are you supposed to be?"

"Confederate States of America. Currently I just represent the Southern States and their culture." I tell him, tryin' not to sound to prideful. _Pride goeth before a fall,_ they always say. Or maybe it's something else. I dunno. The point is, I ain't gonna let this kid see how very proud I am of my little lost confederacy and all its people.

"Confederate States... aren't you the one who a hundred years ago split away from Alfred over slavery issues?"

"Somethin' like that." I agree. It wasn't all slavery. Most of us were just poor farmboys who grew up with a sense of pride and a want to defend our land. I think back to Joey and Tucker and Drummer Boy Benny, and well... they never meant no harm. They were boys, fightin' for Southern State rights to make our own laws. We thought we were doin' right. I guess the yankees taught their boys the same sorta things, probably.

"Well, I wouldn't want to ally myself with that... I have morals." Peter says.

"Are you related to Arthur?" I ask, changin' the subject before he makes me more angry at him.

"Yeah. The eyebrows give it up, huh?" He says, smoothin' out his gold-blond hair over 'em.

"A bit. You Alfred's lil' brother, then?"

"No. I'm actually Arthur's. He was the baby until I showed up in 1967."

"Arthur's got siblings?" I ask.

"Yeah. Our oldest brother's called Allistair, he's Scottish, then there's Finnius, who's Irish, and then there's Wynn, who's Welsh, and then there's Arthur and me. They're flying in tonight." Peter explains. This family I'm a part of is huge, apparently. Full of foreigners, too. Ugh, to think I'm part Irish, though. Must be why I can hold my liquor so well.

"I'm the best though," Peter says. "Sealand might not be a big country yet, but when I am, I'll take over the whole world!"

I just roll my eyes at that.

"So, what's the deal with Oliver and his family?" I then ask to get more information. This kid knows a lot and I mean to take advantage of it.

"Oliver's brothers don't talk to him ever. They're kind of afraid of him, I think." I shake my head at that.

"Why's Al a different color than the rest of 'em, I mean?"

Peter shrugs and says he don't know. Says I'll have to ask Oliver for that info.

I wonder if Oliver bought Al at a slave auction and then 'cuz of his nation status adopted him...

* * *

><p>It's finally Christmas Eve, and the little house is full of people, like mine was right before Nat and I got married. We're havin' a sorta party for the nations that can come, which I find kinda nice. I really have grown to like the way all the other nations are like family with each other. It almost makes me wish I'd grown up around 'em so I didn't feel like an outsider. Almost.<p>

Arthur's brothers are alright, loud and willin' to embarrass him, like big brothers do. I'm sittin' off to the side, feelin' like I might go to bed soon, when Alfred shows up with Matthew behind him and puts somethin' wrapped in shiny paper in my hands, sayin' it "might help me and Nat with the kid"

It's a box with a baby's rattle and white gown in it, and when I give him a questioning but thankful look, he sits next to me and says,

"Me and Mattie both wore that when we were kids, and that rattle went through us too. Thought your kid might like havin' something to wear, and I know you guys aren't that rich." while smilin'.

"Thank you, Alfred... I appreciate the thought." I say, smilin' back at him.

"You know, lots of nations are moving to New York because it's closer to the UN Headquarters. We've already pretty much taken over this street and one of the apartment complexes... Maybe you and Natasha should move north." He says.

"I ain't got money fer two places and I ain't leavin' the farm." I tell him.

"Your 'farm' is a run-down house with a shed in the back and a bunch of woods and over-run cotton plants."

"And I'm damn proud of it."

"Okay," Alfred sighs, "maybe I can do some things and make them give you more farmland, and money to hire some workers for it. I just don't want your kid to grow up in poverty."

"I might not have money, but I sure ain't starvin', most times." I tell him, "I've always been poor, and I ain't afraid to always be."

"Alright... but if you need help, don't be scared to call me." He says, his smile comin' back.

"Alright." As he starts to walk away, I call out, "Hey, Alfred," and when he turns around, "Merry Christmas to ya." He grins back at me, in the crowded living room,

"Merry Christmas, J.G."

Such a weird boy. Introducin' me as 'South' all day and then callin' me my real name to my face. That Yankee Alfred is a very strange one.


	41. Chapter 41

It's finally gettin' to be summer again, where a man huntin' for his due-any-day wife's supper can leave his jacket and cap hangin' on the bedpost 'cuz of the heat. It's also almost time to start the job of pickin' the cotton in the field, which is real tedious when you ain't got a machine or a hundred fifty slaves to do it for you, even if my field ain't that big. Every day I'll have to go out and pull the fluff from the top of the waist-high plants in the hot sun and every night I'll have to run all the fluff through the machine to get the seeds out so I can sell it in town. I suspect I'll get very sunburnt and very tanned.

It's alright money, compared to last year when I didn't have a machine or a field. They've started makin' a new building in downtown Allen, and I intend to see if they'll take one un-educated poor man to help with the construction. For now, though, I'm showin' Nat my latest money-makin' idea.

"Looky here, Nat, you put this in here, then it steams a bit, I dunno really what it does, but then it gits piped in here and then you kin put in in jars in the cellar and we kin sell it!"

"J.G.," She starts tiredly, like she has so many other times, "I am fairly sure makink moonshine in your back yard is a good way to get arrested."

"Pfft, none of the cops ever come back here!" I say. One of the best things about livin' five miles from town is no one but your neighbor ever knows what you're up to. My neighbors moved away after their teenage girl got killed in last year's twister, and also their grandmama got offended at my ways. Many a day that woman was at my porch sayin' somethin' or another about racist propaganda and her children believin' that stuff. I'm about to have a half-Russian baby, so I think I'm plenty racially con-shi-us and di-verse-i-fyin'. Still, I feel for the family and their loss, even if I ain't sad to see that mean ol' grandmama go, and no one's bought their farm yet, so we're alone out here.

"Well if I am asked, I did not know it was here and I do not condone." She says, walkin' back into the house in the funny waddlin' way she has to now. Then, she stops. "Ow... Baby, please, do not..." I leave the still to go over to her.

"What's wrong, Nat?"

"I think baby is comink..." She gets out. "Ohhh J.G. it hurts..." I grab her arm and take her to the truck, which I keep stubbornly gettin' in bright shiny red despite havin' lost it twice now, and soon we're off to Colombia General Hospital, as Allan ain't got one, bein' a lil' 'blip' town.

* * *

><p>I've been in this waitin' room for a long time. They won't let me in, as it would upset Nat, and so I looked through some magazine about some famous people somewhere, stared at the fish tank for a while, and then just sat and tapped my foot, as I am now. Finally, the nurse lady comes out and says,<p>

"Mr. Jones?" while lookin' around. I stand up and look at her.

"Your wife and baby would like to see you." She says, smilin'. I follow her in a hurry, and soon find Nat sittin' in the hospital bed with a lil' bundle of white and blue blankets in her arms, and in the bundle I can see a pink lil' face with a lil' wisp of pale blond hair, just the color of Nat's curled across the forehead.

"J.G.," Nat says, holdin' the lil' bundle out to me, "this is your daughter."

I take the baby and look at her, and she kinda opens her eyes in lil' slits, and I can see they're a pale sky blue, just like mine, and since she's awake now, grinnin' like an idiot, I say,

"Well hey there, lil' one. I'm yer daddy, and welcome to South Carolina, hmm..." I look up at Nat, at this, "Maribel, I think." She smiles and nods. We'd agreed that was a good name for a girl 'cuz Nat can say it and it's easily said in a 'Merican mouth too.

"Maribel Ivana Jones..." Nat says, actually tearin' up. We'd decided to name the girl after her big brother, too. A boy would'a been... Well, I would'a hoped a boy would'a been J. G. Jones Jr., but Nat said Ivan was a good name. We would'a figured it out, but now... Maribel Ivana Jones is what my daughter is, and that's what she'll be.

"I dunno what to say, Nat... I'm just so happy, that we got a kid..." I say, feelin' that lump in my throat that makes my voice crack and my eyes tear up.

"I know... I love you, J.G." She says.

"I love you to, Nat, and our lil' girl Maribel too."


	42. Chapter 42

I'm exhausted. Nation babies ain't 'sposed to be babies for long, but Maribel's about two months old now and ain't lookin' to grow up any quicker. She can't even hold her head up, she don't sleep through the night, and she puked on me three times yesterday. Havin' a baby is hard.

Nat's upset 'cuz rather than wake her every time Maribel starts screamin', I bought formula and give her a bottle instead. I asked Nat if she might find it more pleasin' if I taped the bottle to my chest and fed the baby that way, and she rolled her eyes and told me to go back to bed. I have concluded that that ain't what she meant when she said that.

So, I get up and go to work, workin' the machines. Today, though, maybe I'm just tired, but I find my left leg is kinda shaky to stand on. I'm probably fine, but that leg's the one I got shot off by a cannon back in the civil war, so I'm a lil' bit suspicious of it. I ignore the feelin' and keep on my day. I'm okay, and then it's time to go home and nap for an hour before supper, eat and then get ready to get woken up about eight times.

It's been about a month, and now Maribel can roll over. She can't get back from her stomach to her back, so she just starts screamin' instead. I ain't worried about that as I'm made to hold up somethin' for a bunch of other guys to work on. I sure ain't worried about it when my left leg gives under me and I fall, the heavy metal thing on top of the middle of my back, pinnin' me. The other men get the thing off of me, and tell me to just focus on machines. I agree and as my leg ain't workin' all the way yet, sorta hobble over to a bench.

* * *

><p>"J.G., can you take the baby?" Nat asks, as I walk in the door. The kid's in my hands as soon as I open my mouth so I just look down at her pale lil' face.<p>

"Hullo, Maribel." I greet her. She makes a long loud yell. She's wearin' a white onesy-t-shirt thing with pink ruffles at the sleeves and leg-holes. I told Nat we should tape a bow to her head so she looks like a girl no matter what, but that idea was rejected in the grounds of 'you should not put tape on babies, J.G.'

"Hm, you smell funny. Let's try changin' you." I tell her. She starts cryin' when I set her down so I just start hummin' whatever I can think of, and when she's shut up from that, I actually try singin' just a bit changin' the lyrics to a song I heard on the radio the other day,

_"It won't be like this for long_

_someday soon this little girl is gonna be_

_all grown up and gone_

_and this phase is gonna fly by_

_so i'm tryin' to hold oooon..._

_'cuz it won't be like this for long."_

Soon I notice Nat's standin' in the doorway of the baby's room, smilin' at us. I look at Maribel and she's fallen asleep on the changin' table.

"Hm, and you say you are not good with kids." Nat says, pickin' Maribel up and settin' her in the crib. We stand there, watchin' her sleep for a while, and I just know things are gonna seem to fly by, and it'll seem like just yesterday I was feedin' her at four in the mornin' and she'll be wakin' me up for her first day of school...

_I just know it._


	43. Chapter 43

"Daddy... Daddy..."

I open my eyes a bit.

"Wha'd'ya want?"

"Mama says you gotta be up when the clock says a five, a zero and a 'nother zero to take me to preschool." She says.

"Yeah."

"How long is that?" I look over at the clock. It says three thirty in the mornin'. I just sigh.

"Two and a half hours. Go to sleep, Maribel."

She's real excited about the fact she's four, and four is old enough to go to Miss Reed's preschool in Allan. I'm happy for her, but she's gotta stop wakin' me up.

"I'm e'cited and I don't wanna sleep." She says.

"Well then go and play quietly in yer bed layin' down with the lights off." I tell her.

"That's the same as sleepin'!" She says, crossin' her arms in the dark. She's got her hair all in a mess on her head, and it goes about to the bottom of her ears when brushed out. It's always shiny and silky, too, just like Nat's. She's wearin' her nightie that's got kittens all over it.

"Alright, you win. Do what you want, just be quiet." I say, too tired to argue with a four-year-old over goin' to sleep.

When my alarm does go off, I go out to the livin' room and see her asleep on the couch with her doll, Sarah-Anne in her arms. Cutie, I think to myself as I shake her awake gently.

"Maribel, it's five-zero-zero now. Go git dressed and if yer quick enough you'll git McDonald's fer breakfast."

"Yummy!" She shouts, jumpin' off the couch and runnin' back to her bedroom. Maribel talks more like me, 'cuz I'm the one who knows the most English, but she speaks Russian real well, and accordin' to Ivan she talks with the Belarus-i-an accent like Nat. Mostly, though, she talks like me, and probably soon she'll pick up words from the other kids at the daycare and start talkin' like she's really from here and not my strange _yup-he's-southern-dunno-where-from-though_ accent.

I still maintain that since I was found and raised in South Carolina, that's where I'm from. Who ever heard of a lil' kid runnin' across a bunch of states anyway.

Maribel comes back now, holdin' her overalls up in the front.

"Daddy, kin you button it for me?" She asks. I take the straps and put the buttons in their places and then I check her shirt and she's got it on right, not backwards or nothin', and so I ruffle her hair and tell her,

"Alright, yer good! Still gotta do yer hair, though. C'mon," I take her hand and lead her to the bathroom, "I gotta do mine too. We'll do it together, 'cuz we ain't got long hair like Mama, right?"

"Yup!" She says, takin' her lil' brush. She can't really do her own hair yet, but Nat says we ought'a give her the tools to try or she'll never learn. Same with her clothes and shoes. She couldn't figure out velcro straps 'til a few months ago, and I was worried she was gonna turn out to be... well, Nat says I ain't 'sposed to say that word, 'specially not relatin' to my own kid, as it's offensive, so I don't. Instead I'm to use words like "mentally challenged" or "de-vel-op-mentally de-layed," and not "slow" or "retarded."

I only listen to Nat 'cuz she's real aggressive about cleanin' up my language and might just stab me if I say "the n-word" one more time, and maybe more than once if I call any of the nation-couples bad names relatin' to they're lifestyles or where they're from, too. She really thinks I only learned my way of talkin' from how I was brought up, and I agree, but you can't really just change how you were raised. So, I'm makin' an effort to stop usin' such words, at least around Maribel, so maybe I can do right, which apparently means not lettin' your kid learn swear words and insults from you.

* * *

><p>Maribel looks over at me, in her booster seat. With some of Nat's help, she's clipped a clean pink bow in her hair which goes nice with her pink and white velcro light-up shoes and the light purple shirt under her dusty blue overalls. She's gettin' freckles on her face, same as mine, and they do stand out on her pale skin, which not havin' much time to tan yet looks a lot like her Mama's.<p>

"Daddy, what's daycare like?" She asks me. I look at the road in front of me for a bit, thinkin' about it. I ain't been to daycare, hardly been to school. I did, however, used to help look after the littlest of the Big Farm slaves, when I was real little. I 'spose that's like a daycare. I s'pose Joey Coleman and his lookin' after all us youngers in the brigade was like a daycare too. And the kiddie parties the neighbors used to have for their lil' girl Jenny, too.

"Well... It's like... learnin' to do stuff you'll need when yer bigger, like countin' and sittin' still and stuff. Y'all get to play, of course, but you learn things too."

"Think I'll learn to read 'n' write?" She asks.

"Maybe. Though I think they save that stuff 'til y'all're a bit older."

"I wanna know now." She says, frownin' a bit. Then she looks back up at me. "Daddy, kin you teach me readin 'n' writin'?"

I freeze up at that. I can't really teach somethin' I dunno that well myself, can I? Nat says she thinks I have about a third-grade readin' level, which means I can figure out what stuff is eventually, but I can't really _read_, at least not more than simple stuff. If I can't do something, there's no way I can teach my kid. So I just tell her,

"Well, maybe."

Soon, we pulled up into the building with the glass all on it. It's about six now, as it took us half an hour to get ready, then another to get to the place, with stoppin' for breakfast and all. There's already a couple kids about Maribel's age playin' in there. I look over at Maribel, and she's just starin' with this worried look on her face.

"Daddy, I ain't so sure I wanna go there no more." She says.

"You gotta, so yer gonna, and yer gonna have fun, right?" I say, un-doin' my seatbelt. She copies me and gives a shuddery sigh and says,

"Yeah..." while holdin' her doll close. I know what it's like to be the new kid, too. Poor lil' thing, must be terrified. She's only known me and Nat, really, and now she's gonna have to talk to other kids.

"Hey, Maribel," I start, and she looks at me as i get down to her level, "Y'know, when I was only a lil' older than you, I had to leave the farm I lived on here and go all the way to Missouri to go to boardin' school, with other boys I'd never even heard of. 'Least you don't gotta leave me and yer mama to go live at daycare, right?" She nods, still holdin' her doll close. Ah, well. Nothin' for it but to make her do it, I guess.

"Hey," I say, and the lady wearin' the apron comes over to me.

"Yes, sir?"

"This here is my daughter, Maribel. I called yesterday, and my wife signed the papers?"

"Ah, yes. Maribel Jones, is it?" She nods, shyly. The woman gets down to her level, same as I did, and smiles brightly at her. "How old are you, Maribel?" She holds up four fingers, still hidin' her face behind her doll. "Well, Sally and Ben over there are four too. Wanna go play with them?" She shakes her head. "How about you go say hi anyways, alright? Your daddy and me have some grown-up things we gotta talk about."

Maribel nods and walks over to stand quietly near the other two, and the boy comes over to her, says, "I like yer dolly" and then she replies, "Thanks. Her name's Sarah-Anne." and the girl asks, "Wanna play house with us? Sarah-Anne kin be the baby and you kin be the big sissy!" And then they're playin'.

The teacher lady was watchin' 'em, but then she looks at me. "So, can you tell me a bit about Maribel? Like if she's allergic to any foods or anything?"

"She ain't allergic to nothin'," I say, "but she's kinda quiet at first, but kinda a tomboy too. She likes bein' outside and despite my best efforts, she ain't very ladylike."

"Nothing's wrong with a girl who'd rather wear overalls then a dress, right?"

"Sure." I agree. I've also been told to stop tryin' to force "gender roles" on Maribel. There's a lot I ain't s'posed to do now that I've got a kid.

"Alright. What time will you be by to pick her up, about?" The teacher asks me.

"Five-thirty, my wife'll be by prob'ly." I say. "She's workin' in the new European Cafe on Main."

"Ah, is she the tall blond Russian barista?"

"Yup. That's my Nat." I say, proudly.

"Well, I do think if Maribel grows up to look like her mama, she'll have no trouble attractin' the men. You'd best watch out fer those smooth-talkin' farmboys, Daddy." She says, smilin'.

"Ha, yeah." I say. I ain't gonna let a bad sort of boy hurt my lil' girl. If I gotta chase him away with my 12-gauge then I will, but no one'll hurt my baby. "I'd best be off to work now." I say, and start out the door, but Maribel's grabbed my leg and is whimperin' for me to not leave her here. Teacher comes over and grabs her away.

"Now Maribel, yer daddy's gotta go to work. Yer gonna stay here for a lil' while, and then yer mama'll be by to get you."

"B-but... I want Daddy!" she calls out, startin' to cry.

"Maribel, I'll be back too. It's alright. Go play house with the other two!" I say, "Look, they're lookin' at you all worried 'cuz the baby needs a big sissy." She sniffles.

"Promise me you'll come back." She says, crossin' her arms. I just smile.

"I promise I'll be back. Now go play." I tell her, after huggin' her tight.

It'll get better, after all. Besides, it'll only be a year before she's goin' off to school.


	44. Chapter 44

Maribel's in first grade now, havin' skipped Kindergarten easily. She's real bright, after all. Right now, though, I'm goin' in for a conference her teacher, Miss Miller called.

"Maribel is a very smart girl, but she questions authority too much." The teacher says.

"What'd'ya mean?" I ask.

"Well, we were havin' the kids read from their science books, and Maribel raised her hand and said the book was 'lyin' to her 'cuz her mama told her humans came from fishes and monkeys and not created at all.'" Nat just sighs and I get confused. How'd a human come from a fish, anyway? Don't Nat know we were all God's creations? What's she tellin' Maribel, sayin' humans came from fishes? Crazy woman.

"I'll have you know I don't believe in such a thing, and I don't know why my wife would feed that ridiculous yankee propaganda to my daughter." I say. Nat sighs louder and puts her head down on the table.

"This entire conversation is ridiculous." She says, muffled by the table. Miss Miller just looks at the both of us.

"That's another thing. Maribel uses harsh language in class. She called one of her classmates a 'damn dirty n_'" the other day because he wouldn't share the blocks with her." Nat glares straight at me.

"I ain't got the foggiest idea where she'd learn such a thing." I say, tryin' to keep a blank face. I thought I was bein' careful, but I guess Maribel heard me anyway.

"J.G. uses slurs like that a lot when he thinks Maribel cannot hear. I tried tellink him to stop, but it is very hard to change southerners and their habits." Nat says. I glare at her this time. Miss Miller just sighs.

"Please, just try to teach your daughter better. It's for her own good."

"Was the kid she called-" Nat glares again so I change was I was gonna say fast, "-called a bad name even black?" I ask. Miss Miller just nods.

"Only one in the whole class." she says. Nat just sighs again.

"Well she wasn't _wrong_." I say.

"It's the principle of the thing, Mr. Jones." Miss Miller replies. "Here at Sanderson Elementary we are aware of what our state's reputation is and we don't want our children to conform to it."

"What's the rep-a-tation our state's got?" I ask. "And what's that got to do with Maribel callin' someone names?"

"South Carolina is known as the one who first declared their decision to secede and form the Confederacy in 1860. The state who claims they'll still accept confederate dollars, and has the flag of that nation at their state house. People think we're all a bunch of racist redneck confederates, and the goal of our school is to disprove that. Simply put, Mr. Jones, we cannot allow your daughter to go around calling her classmates racial slurs."

We leave soon after that, and on the way home, Nat looks over at me.

"J.G., why is that school sayink Maribel is wrong for learnink about evolution?" she asks.

"'Cuz it ain't right to tell kids things that ain't true." I say back.

"Which is more true? The widely researched theory with a lot of evidence, or a book that maybe was written somewhere in the Middle East a thousand years ago?" Nat asks.

"First of all, theory means it ain't true, and second, the earth ain't in the Middle East last I checked." I answer.

"I am not goink to argue with you because your religion is somethink you are very set in. Instead, I propose somethink else: Alfred called me and said he found a cheap place in New York. He will help us pay for both it and the upkeep of the farm here. The schools are better up north, so Maribel will get good education."

"You think we should move?" I ask, "To yankee-land?"

"да. We will not have to travel so far for the UN conferences, either, and many of the nations are movink to New York, so Maribel will grow up around her own kind as well."

"Yeah, but... I like it here." I say to her.

"Well, we can come back whenever you'd like." Nat says. "Every year if you want."

"Well... If it'll help Maribel git educated... then I guess we ought'a do it."

* * *

><p><em><strong>AN: I do not condone accidentally teaching children racial slurs so don't do it plz. (also funny story i've based some of the things that happen to J.G. off of my own experiences (read: the one time he got minty shampoo in his eye at the UN conference) and uh once when I was little my mom caught me playing a video game and going "shit shit shit!" and then she made my dad watch and he was all "oops i didn't know she'd seen me doing that lol")**_


	45. Chapter 45

We're gonna move. It's the last few weeks at our old place, and I'm walkin' around, when it hits me. I know what I gotta do and I'm gonna do it. I go to the library, and I ask the woman if she has any Civil War records. She says of course she does. I ask for one in particular. She looks at me a bit funny, but goes and looks for it. When she comes back, she says she don't know nothin' but what's on the card, which is a name: Rowan James McGuire.

_Good,_ I think, _that means he's gotta be somewhere._

I tell Nat I'll only be gone a while, and I get in the truck and drive. I stop at the building that says "Antebellum Memorial Museum" and stand in front. It looks like a rich planter's mansion, all big with dark doors and a lotta windows. Lookin' far behind it I can see the old red haybarn, with tourists hangin' around it now. I go in and ask the lady if she knows anything about the Herbert Johnson Charity Boys' School. She does. I ask if she's got student records. She does and gets me the recordbook.

I flip to a page and find in scratchy, hard to make out writin', _Jason G. Jones, born December 20, 1849, from Fredrickson Plantation, Allan, South Carolina, enrolled September 1st, 1857 at eight years of age. Unenrolled on June 4th, 1861 due to uncertain circumstances._ Gosh, I'd always wondered if Mister knew I'd run away to join the army. I guess not. I flip on until I find it: _Rowan James McGuire, born August 14th, 1845, from McGuire Plantation, Baton Rouge, enrolled on September 2nd, 1855 at ten years of age. Expelled on June 3rd, 1861 due to highly inappropriate conduct regarding another student._

I asked the lady if she had any more records regarding the two boys there, and she nods and sets a document in front of me.

"McGuire there was a Union soldier who was killed in action in 1865. He's buried in the battlefield cemetery in Palmito, Texas. Jones joined the Confederates, and the only other record of him we have after 1861 was that in 1862 he got malaria and in 1863 he joined the 96th Virginia brigade as a fireteam leader. We don't know where he was buried. Personally, I find it fascinating, and the two of them, leavin' the school at such close times... I wonder if Rowan's inappropriate conduct involved Jason in any way." She says.

I thank her and head off to Palmito, to the battlefield cemetery. When I finally get there, I'm feelin' real nervous, but also like somethin's followin' me there. I walk through the headstones. They're marked as Union or Confederate, and most are Southerners, but then I see the headstone.

_Rowan McGuire_

_Born August 14, 1845_

_Dead by a Confederate bullet on_

_June 11, 1865_

I feel the lump risin' in my throat again, and I know it's stupid to cry over a long-dead yankee soldier, but I can't help but think once again about _Every boy in that cemetery, yankee or rebel, was somebody's darlin'. Someone's boy they ain't never seen again._ and it hurts, but I don't really start cryin' 'til I think, _Everyone's somebody's darlin', but it's worst when somebody's darlin' becomes yours._

With tears coming down my face, and lookin' like an idiot, I'm sure, I swear I can see him finally, the man Nat says follows me around, with his orange hair showin' under his dark blue cap and those eyes, dark green, like a forest at night, and he kinda stands on the grave with the sorta half-smile he used to do, that I see Nat do sometimes and think of, and I think real hard at him,

_I'm sorry I ain't told it to you when you was livin'... But..._

_Goo'bye, Row. You always were my darlin'._

* * *

><p>Nat, bein' Nat, had followed me with lil' Maribel in the movin' van too. She came up behind me as I was standin' there shakin' and tryin' not to cry too much, and asked,<p>

"J.G., why did you come here?"

I sniffed back the salty snot in my nose and looked over at her.

"It's nothin'." I said.

"Clearly, it's somethink, to make you cry. You can tell me, you know." She said more gently.

"Well..." No more hidin' nothin', not from Nat at least. If she don't want me after this, then I'll stay in Allan and keep goin', "When I was in school, so was this kid, Rowan. He was a lil' older than me, and real nice. Prob'ly 'cuz we both knew bein' pulled from what we knew and bein' told it was wrong- I got taken from the plantation and called an idiot farmboy and he was from Boston, and was branded as a dumb yankee right away. So, we were friends..."

I looked down at my feet in the grass, feelin' my face heat up, "I... well, when I was about twelve, a few years after I started at school, I started to feel weird around Row. He said it was alright, and he'd take care of me and love me always... So..."

My face was really startin' to burn with shame now, "And... well we always used to sneak out into the haybarn durin' our breaks and do... things. Nat, I promise we never went too far, as we were only lil' boys, but..." I sighed loud, and felt hot tears in my eyes again, "We got caught at it in his bed one night, with our nightshirts off and him on top'a me kissin' me, and... That's how I got the scars on my back, was the schoolmaster beatin' the sin outta me, 'cuz I was younger and could be saved. Row got e'spelled, and so I ran away to the army..."

Nat started to say somethin', but I spoke again, "And, well... Right before Alfred found me, on the battlefield here in Palmito, one of the last things I remember before gettin' shot with that yankee cannon that took my leg off was lookin' into dark green eyes, just like his, and seein' orange hair under a yankee blue cap. I think the fireteam leader that took my leg off was Row... and I wish I could'a told him I didn't never blame him fer it... That I still liked him, and if we'd stayed at school we prob'ly would'a still stayed best friends... Even if he was from the north and I am the south..."

I put my head into my hands at this point, and Nat held me close. Then, she looked up,

"J.G., look. The orange-haired soldier..." I looked up and could only just see the outline, but that was him. That was my Row. I knew I'd seen him when I got here, I knew it...

"I can see...?" I said in shock.

"I think he's tryink to say goodbye to you." The outline sorta nodded, lookin' right at me. He waved.

He faded away.

I turned back to Nat.

"I think I'm ready to move away now." I told her. She smiled.

* * *

><p>Maribel, as I got into the van, with Nat promisin' she'd send someone for the truck later, asked me,<p>

"Daddy, did you really live on the farm yer whole life?"

"Yup. Ever since I was littler'n you."

"What was it like, when you were little?" She asked, her pale-blue eyes wide and curious.

"Well... we've got a ways to go... how'd you like to hear all about the farm and the war and everything, huh?"

"You were in a war?" She asked in wonder.

"Yup. The Civil War. But my story don't start there. It starts way back, back in 1851, when the people in south states like South Carolina and Texas were still allowed to have black people as slaves... First thing I remember is that _I was scared out of my mind and I didn't know why, didn't know what was after me, just knew I'd been told to run 'n' run 'til I couldn't run no more..."_

* * *

><p><em><strong>AN: I can either end here, or keep going with new chapters about J.G.'s adventures in New York. Or I can start a sequel to this story that's an ongoing series. Leave a review with which option you all like better! I will write more about J.G., because I love that ignorant southern idiot, but I'd like to know how my readers think I should go about it. :3**_


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